


Who’s Afraid of Rin-Rin

by skaralding



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Cannibalism, Crack Treated Seriously, Crack and Angst, Dark Crack, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff and Crack, Happy Ending, Happy Murder Family, Jinchuuriki Nohara Rin, M/M, Multi, POV Original Female Character, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, Threesome - F/M/M, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2020-06-30 13:52:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 23
Words: 71,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19854550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skaralding/pseuds/skaralding
Summary: No one is afraid of the girl who calls herself Rin-Rin, not at first. She's a genius (a couple decades of another life will do that), but she'sannoying, clinging to childhood even as her body count climbs. She'd much rather be adored than feared, especially by her favoritevictimspeople.But her village is at war, and the more Rin loses to its gaping maw, the more she yearns to shed her cute mask and let her enemies know whytheyshould be afraid.





	1. The early years (1)

**Author's Note:**

> Noooo I don't need another project but I made one anyway /o\\. First three chapters up right now because why not.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No one is afraid of Rin at first. Which is understandable, given that she's still so small.

### Rin, 2 years old

Magic was nice. Nice to feel again, draw in with every inhaled breath, and then let out with a short, panting sigh.

The people, though… the people here were all pretty much bugfuck nuts.

Rin—she didn’t remember what, if anything, she had used to be called, and had taken on the name her new parents called her—didn’t think that this was the way to go, when you were raising a beloved child. She had had toys, Before, but none of them had ever been blunted knives, or ropes, or pretty little circles of metal that she could see doing damage to someone if the star points that dotted their edges had been properly sharp.

As it was, it took a significant amount of concentration not to injure her stubby, too-small fingers on them.

“She likes them,” Papa cooed, his attempt at baby-talk making it even harder to understand his words. “Rin-Rin, smile, look up? Look at papa?”

They were so easily pleased. One look up, one uncertain smile, and the camera shutter’s click was lost in their delighted laughter. It made Rin smile harder.

And then, because she was just that much of a degenerate, just that desperate to keep the joy flowing, she strained, picked up the blunted knife and waved it.

Papa grinned. Mama did too, but it looked a little sad, and in a moment, she bent down to gently pick Rin up and extract the knife from her still-clumsy grip. “Time… change, hm?”

Rin nodded firmly, though there was a word or two in there she wasn’t sure about. Mama’s grin was weird up close—the marks on her cheeks made it look strange. Rin patted the smooth skin covered by the mark in a bid to distract herself from the terrifying sensation of being moved by someone much larger and stronger than herself.

She didn’t know whether it was normal to have kids this young, even in ancient times. So she patted a little harder, and let the rumble of Mama’s voice lull her into a state that was somewhere between asleep and awake.

The best thing about being here, she decided, wasn’t the magic. It was the emptiness of her head. The vague fuzziness over everything she struggled to remember. Sleeping in her parent’s arms was nothing short of bliss.

* * *

### (Rin, almost 5 years old)

Bliss went away all too quickly. Days passed, and if Rin had not been charting the growth of her hands obsessively, if she hadn’t the colourfully painted, tidily dated hand-size records to prove the passage of time, she would have thought it all came about in a handful of months.

Time was difficult, as a child. Time was doubly difficult when the clocks didn’t follow you, and instead stayed stubbornly on their walls.

“Nohara Rin,” Maeda-san said, her low, tight tone brimming with disapproval. “Care to explain why you are, yet again—”

“Slept too much,” Rin said, as she toddled to the only empty desk in the room, the one in the front row that was one desk over from the window and six desks over from the door. “Sorry, Sensei.”

Maeda-san glared at her for a brief moment, then sighed. “Your assignment?”

“Um, Sensei, that…”

“You will stay to finish it at the end of the day,” Maeda-san said, hardly bothering to look away from the blackboard she was now once again writing on. “Unless you didn’t bring it?”

The dark undertone in her voice caused the whole class to hunch down, just a little, in their chairs. Well, the whole class minus Rin, who was busy getting her writing things out of her annoyingly heavy school bag. And of course there was also the silver-haired boy to her left, Hatake-kun, who always grabbed the first row desk nearest the window. He was now also glaring at her, and seemed entirely unaffected by Maeda-san’s tone. “Um… it’s here, Sensei. I have it.”

“Good,” was the cold answer. “Get up here and solve this, then, Nohara-kun.”

Rin went up, inwardly amused by the fact that it had been more than half a year of her being shunted from class to class at the Academy, and yet some teachers _still_ thought that flustering her by putting her on the spot was something they could do if they planned well enough, tried hard enough. Rin worked through the overcomplicated equation on the board neither slowly nor quickly, and when she could no longer be sure of what she was doing, she stopped.

“Well?” Rin had to hand it to Maeda-san, the woman’s tone was perfect. Just the right amount of impatience, just the right amount of disregard, but not too much. No one that heard the woman could say she was gloating over a too-smart four-year-old child’s misfortune, or even say that she was pushing the child unduly. “Why aren’t you finished?”

“Ah, that, Sensei,” Rin said, turning around, rotating the chalk between her fingers. “Rin-Rin can’t finish it.”

Factual. Slightly apologetic, but not in the way of someone apologizing because they thought they’d done wrong. Maeda-san’s brief glance at the half-finished equation on the board only made her frown harder. “This—what do you mean, you can’t finish it? It was on last week’s test!” Left unsaid was the fact that Rin had gotten the second highest score on that test. “Don’t joke around with me, young lady. Finish it!”

“But, Sensei,” Rin said, scrunching up her face, “Rin-Rin won’t be able to reach, it’s too high.”

“Use. The stool.”

“Ah, but…”

For a brief moment, the brightly lit classroom seemed to dim, seemed to tighten around Rin’s wavering form and that of her glaring teacher. Then Maeda-san let out a short, ragged sigh, leaning her hip against the side of the sturdy wooden lectern just a few steps away from the board. “Nohara-kun,” she said, “surely you know that determination is the one thing you require as a ninja. Finish your work, or you’ll have to run laps during lunch.”

Rin looked at the board, then at Maeda-san, then at the board again. Then, shuffling her feet a little, she inched toward the lectern, the chalk in her hand held out in front of her.

“Nohara-kun—!”

“Rin-Rin already ate lunch on the way here, Sensei,” Rin said, earnestly. “Rin-Rin doesn’t mind running.”

The expectant silence that followed that almost chipper announcement was nearly immediately broken by a loud creak. Maeda-san, her expression dull with resignation, looked down at the slightly distorted top of the lectern, then let go of it, opening and closing her gloved fist. “Then,” she said, in a low, thick tone, “twenty laps.”

“Yes, Sensei.” Probably, that reluctant acquiescence meant that Rin was going to be moved up soon, but she wouldn’t bet on it until it had actually happened. “Sorry, Sensei.”

Maeda-san waved vaguely in her direction, her expression still dark. “Hatake-kun,” she said, “you come up and finish this.”

The silver-haired boy at the window desk stood up with a loud, exaggerated scrape, then stalked—or was it prowled—to the front of the class with nearly soundless steps, glaring at Rin the whole way. He was something like a quarter-head taller than Rin, and he was always willing to stretch and contort his way into reaching the distant parts of the board, or drag over the little stool in front of the blackboard and stand on it without being prompted. He finished the equation in moments, his writing neat, his numbers meticulously correct.

“Good,” Maeda-san said, again, actually sounding like she meant it this time. “Well done, Hatake-kun.”

“It was my duty, Sensei.”

Inwardly, Rin couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Outwardly, she beamed proudly at the scowling older boy as he stalked back to his seat, much the same way girls their age would beam at him back when there were any girls their age in their class. “Hata-kun is so cool,” Rin whispered, the moment he sat down. “Rin-Rin isn’t very good at these things.”

“Liar,” was the responding hiss, the moment Maeda-san’s back was turned as she rubbed out the old equation in preparation for writing out another one for someone else in the class to tackle. “You beat me the test before last.”

“Ah, about that, um,” Rin said, unable to help herself. The way the boy was glaring at her was a goad in and of itself, and the curious, scandalized looks they were getting from the older kids around them was even more of a motivation. “Can Rin-Rin tell you a secret?”

“Shut up! Sensei’s talking!”

Rin, undeterred, turned to the stiff-backed boy seated in the desk to her right. “Kondo-senpai,” she said, in an over-loud whisper, “do you want to know Rin-Rin’s secret?”

Kondo-kun, who had twitched when she said his name, didn’t deign to look at her for a few moments. But, when Maeda-san turned back to the board after calling up a slouching, bored-looking Inuzuka girl to do the honours, Kondo-kun turned his head back in Rin’s direction and eyed her up and down. “A shrimp like you can’t know anything interesting.”

In other words, he was willing to be persuaded. “I do,” Rin shot back. “Rin-Rin knows _all_ the best secrets!”

Kondo-kun snorted. Hatake-kun gave her dagger looks. The girl in the seat behind Hatake bit her lip, looking too amused for words. The girl in the seat behind Rin frowned at her.

“Rin-Rin, um,” Rin said, squirming a little, because it would add the right touch, “on that test, Rin-Rin may have cheated.”

Silence. The room wavered around Rin, stretching strangely in her mind, as if the space between her desk and Hatake-kun’s desk was one long tunnel.

“Hata-kun,” Rin said, widening her eyes, wishing she could still cry on command, “don’t…”

“You’re lying,” Hatake said, through gritted teeth, loudly enough that everyone around them went still. “You can’t have—how would you even—?”

“Um,” Rin said, her voice a little smaller than she would like. She’d never get used to the way it felt to have the hostile attention of so many different children pinned on her. It was worse than being stared at by adults; with adults, she at least had the comfort of knowing that, if they attacked, she could justify retaliating without holding back. “It’s, um, the lounge is easy to climb into. The one where the teachers put tests and stuff.”

“Bullshit,” Kondo-kun snapped. “There’s no way you got in.”

“You stole the answers?” Hatake-kun said, his eyes so cold they felt as if they should bore holes through her. “You. You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

“Only the maths questions,” Rin said, soothingly. “Rin-Rin doesn’t look at the others, okay? Just the ones Rin-Rin doesn’t—”

“Just what are you jabbering about back there?” Maeda-san called out, over her shoulder. “Keep quiet and pay attention to the board, or else—”

Sadly, she hadn’t even finished that warning before Hatake-kun, enraged beyond measure, darted up from his seat and cracked the lid of Rin’s desk with a clumsily chakra-enhanced kick. Then Rin was too engaged with the fight to pay much attention, trading blow for blow, cheating shamelessly.

By the time the fight came to an end, Rin’s lip had split, her hair had been yanked free from its already stubby, pitiful pigtails, her knuckles were full of scrapes and splinters, the right half of her face felt like one big bruise, and her left arm was caught in the vicelike grip of Maeda-san’s slightly shaking hand. “You, you both, you really—!”

“Sensei, Hata-kun hit me first,” Rin tried to sob, through smarting lips. But even as the words left her mouth, she knew they had failed; after all, what timid, beaten, victimized four-year-old girl would sound so gleeful even in this situation? “It’s all his fault, not mine.”

“Sensei, she confessed to cheating on the tests,” Hatake-kun said, forcefully. “Please investigate.”

“Even if it’s true, Hata-kun shouldn’t have h-h-hit me,” Rin managed to get out. Wow, the cut in her lip must be deeper than she thought, it was that hard to talk. “Everyone’s always saying we got to be re–resuf–res’sful, as ninja. So Rin-Rin did it like that.”

“Resourceful doesn’t mean _cheating_ ,” Hatake-kun spat, even though he knew just as well as most of the class that it obviously did. Rin didn’t know whether to be satisfied with how freely he still seemed to be moving even after she’d managed to give him a really good punch to the stomach, and had scratched bloody furrows into his arms and his neck. But seriously injuring him would have been bad; he _was_ only five years old. “Sensei, it’s—isn’t there a rule against cheating during tests?”

“Even so,” Rin said, loudly, “Hata-kun shouldn’t have hit Rin-Rin. Sensei, Hata-kun’s really mean, even to his friends.”

“Who the hell is your friend?” Hatake-kun shouted, and for the rest of the day, even as she helped clean up the splinters and straighten up the classroom while dutifully listening to Maeda-san’s unending lecturing, Rin had to bite the inside of her aching lip to remind herself not to smile.

Getting Hatake-kun to curse at her _and_ sound that shrill was always so satisfying.

* * *


	2. The early years (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin does her best to forge stronger bonds with her reluctant new friend. It doesn't always work the way she wants it to.

### (Rin, almost 7 years old)

Two years later, the joy of hearing Hatake-kun curse up a storm had faded, perhaps from overuse, or perhaps because Rin was all too aware that he did it to vent, and the things he was venting about were not at all joyful.

He’d lost one team; she’d lost something like one and a half. His win.

He’d killed fourteen people; she’d killed seventeen. Her win.

He’d ranked higher than her in the chunin tournament. His win.

He’d broken out into persistent hives not two days after making chunin, having failed to notice the light coating of dust she’d sneaked in to leave on the inside of his shirt collars. Her win.

He’d never managed to shake off Gai-kun, or otherwise deter that stubborn boy from continuing to show up with his ridiculous challenges. She’d never had anyone be that persistent about competing with her. Probably a draw, until she found that special someone suicidal enough to want to try.

He had eight ninken; she had only two sealing rings. His win.

He had two friends, her and Gai-kun; counting only kids, she had five. Her absolute win.

“I’m not your friend,” Hatake-kun muttered, as Rin paused in her recital of wins and losses to try and estimate the number of adults—mostly nurses and patients—that she could count as friends. As always, she and Hatake were in his small, spartan bedroom, him laid out on the bed, her perching half in and half out of the only window. “Strike me off your stupid fucking list.”

See? She’d been a bad influence on him. “Rin-Rin won’t,” she said, anyway, because she knew it’d irritate him. “You’re Rin-Rin’s first friend, okay? Just accept it.”

“How do you manage to sound _more_ like a baby every time I see you?”

“If Rin-Rin’s a baby, you’re a baby too,” Rin said, frowning a little despite herself. She didn’t like thinking about it; somehow, it only seemed particularly clear to her how young she was, how young they both were, when she was dealing with Hatake’s forcibly adult mannerisms in person. “Hata-kun’s only a few weeks older than Rin-Rin, right? Riiiight?”

“Bull,” Hatake said, through gritted teeth, “ _bite her_.”

“Nooooo,” Rin squealed, flipping upside down, sticking to the wall with chakra, and then, when Bull jumped, darting up to the ceiling. “Hata-kun’s still so mean…”

For answer, ‘Hata-kun’ bit his thumb and hurried through a loud, pointed summoning, and the moment his ninken warped into existence, he gave voice to a piercing whistle. “Treats,” was all he said, because there was a routine for this, a routine his ninken knew as well as Rin did.

“Mean,” Rin sobbed, even as she twisted around and eeled out of the window, faster than was probably safe. As she fled, the ninken bounded out after her, snarling and barking in equal measure, Hatake hot on their heels. They wouldn’t catch her—Rin was fast, fast enough that it’d killed half her team when she got ahead of them one miserably sunny day—but they wouldn’t give up until it came to a fight, one Hatake would probably win because he still had reach and weight on her, and little advantages like that mattered when both fighters were trembling with exhaustion and trying not to really hurt each other.

In the end, they ran into Gai-kun halfway through the village, and his joining in put an end to the chase. The ninken didn’t like biting _him_. And, well, it didn’t feel like a real competition once the pursued party had stopped straight up to have a friendly chat with the loudest boy in Konoha.

* * *

### (Rin, almost 8 years old)

A year later, Rin started calling Hatake ‘Kaka-kun’, because he refused to answer to anything that remotely sounded like his last name.

That wasn’t the only bad thing that happened. Papa’s mission as support for a scouting team turned into Papa coming home with scars and a weak, faint smile and an increased susceptibility to chakra exhaustion. Mama, already suffering from similar symptoms bar the hideous enemy-derived scarring, began to have a hard time getting to sleep.

The hospital was Rin’s least favourite place to work, but after an ugly clash with the clueless new genin that had been added to her old team, followed by a really dreadful four-and-a-half days of their being hounded just north of Ame, Rin wasn’t fit for anything but medical work, and barely even fit enough for that. A lucky, poisoned strike to her right arm had festered on the run back to Konoha, and the surgery and detoxification she’d needed afterwards had meant she would need months and months to get back up to a full range of motion.

Managing to cobble together enough sealing paper and metal for her third sealing ring rang hollow in the face of knowing that putting it to use on any actual enemies would likely not happen until midway through the year, if she was lucky. If she was unlucky, if the therapy left her with compromised function…

“You’re useful here, Nohara-chan,” Imai-san said, his harsh tone softening a little as he looked down at her crumpling expression. “Every life you help save is one more shield for Konoha.”

“Yes, sensei,” Rin said, dutifully, and the minute she was off shift, she ran all the way to the Hatake compound, knowing Hata—no, Kakashi was in-village too. He wouldn’t comfort her. He’d sneer, his contempt only partly hidden by his mask. He might even ask if her being locked up in the village like some, like some little _girl_ could be counted as his win.

Instead, she found Kakashi standing stock still, watching as his father’s life drained away.

Rin had never been so angry in her entire life, at least not this one, this crazy new one. She put her hand on Hatake-san’s chest, forcing her chakra into his failing heart. She yelled—or maybe she didn’t, maybe she just snarled. “Get a medic, you _idiot_.”

She fixed. Things. Medical ninjutsu was like and unlike what she’d used to think of as magic. Too much concentration was required. It was a clean wound, the idiot’s stupid moron of a father hadn’t stabbed himself with a rusty kunai, that was something, right? But the weapon he’d used had been charged with chakra, and the tissue was dying where it wasn’t already dead or charred, and Rin had not yet learned how to regrow cells without it all going wrong…

She didn’t know, what felt like hours later, just when Mama had come in, but working with her mother, around her, was the only comforting thing about that wretched day. _I’m pretty good at this,_ she found herself thinking. _It’s a shame I came too late._

Sometimes, she wondered what her superiors made of her detachment. Her ability to act cute in one moment, and calmly take or save (or fail to save) lives in the next. She remembered, in a dim, stretched way, that this—coldness—had used to bother her, had grieved her enough that she couldn’t let go of childish mannerisms even in a world where good children were all supposed to be quiet, serious killers.

Like Kakashi. He just—went on standing there, and even though she knew he had to feel the hurt, his eyes were dry.

“Kakashi-kun,” Mama said, hoarsely, “I’m sorry.”

Kakashi opened his mouth, then closed it, the furrow between his brows deepening. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough. “He was a failure.”

Mama stilled, her mouth pinching. “Even so,” she rasped, “I wish I’d come a little sooner.”

“He was a _failure_ ,” Kakashi repeated, as if that answered everything, covered everything. “Still, Nohara-san—”

_Keep it in,_ Rin told herself. _Keep it in._

“—I’m grateful you spared a little time for—for me.”

“It was my duty,” Mama said, distantly, her hands shaking a little as she wiped away the blood. “Rin, can you give us a moment?”

The way Kakashi stiffened as he heard that absent utterance of her name… the way he didn’t look at her as she struggled to her feet…

_He…_ Rin thought, _is he seriously angry at **me**?_

Before she knew it, she was saying the words, asking. _Demanding_. And then adding, when he said nothing in response: “You can’t be that stupid, can you?”

“ _Rin_ ,” Mama said, in a tone that probably didn’t fully convey her utter horror. “Go to the bathroom and wash your hands.”

Ordinarily, Rin didn’t mind obeying her fake mother whenever she brought out that pointed tone. But there was a corpse in the room, on the floor between them, stinking, unmentioned, unremarked, and she couldn’t—she could see the hard-won stillness in Kakashi’s frame, and he was her _friend_ , and she was afraid nobody would tell him the right thing about this. Or that they wouldn’t say it in a way that would make him listen.

She did not go to the bathroom. She stepped away from Mama’s reaching hand and said, in a low, hurried tone: “Rin-Rin wasn’t the one that killed him. Rin-Rin didn’t curse him, didn’t spit on him in the street—”

“Rin! This is _not_ the time—”

“Then when is? The funeral? Does mama really think this moron will hold a good one, if he’s already like this?” Rin wasn’t crying, but she felt like she should be. Her eyes were certainly stinging enough, and even after the things she’d said, Kakashi _still_ wasn’t looking at her. “You like to think you’re so smart.”

“ _Rin._ ”

“Why did y-your father feel he had to die?” Rin got out, between her dodges of Mama’s increasingly angry attempts to grab hold of her arm. “Think!”

Kakashi’s crazed, angry gaze finally met hers. “Weak,” he spat, and looked away. “Too fucking weak.”

But Rin hadn’t badgered him all these years for nothing. Kakashi had to be thinking now, turning over what she’d said in his mind as well as the words she’d specifically used, because he knew Rin didn’t just say things. She twisted words, bent them, wrung meaning after meaning out of small utterances, wielding them like a bludgeon, and of course she’d never not used them against him.

Anyway, if he didn’t think things through, she would remind him. She would make sure he did think it through, if it was the last thing she did in this village.

“You,” Mama said, her hand tight on Rin’s shoulder, “are in a world of trouble, young lady. Bathroom. _Now._ ”

* * *

During their next spar, Kakashi broke her wrist. In return, Rin pinned and strangled him with her good hand, just enough that he’d have to stay still, have to listen.

In the end, no words came to her. She rolled off of him, breathing hard, hating that she couldn’t think of anything to say that she wasn’t sure he already knew.

He had to know that the actions of one man couldn’t single-handedly start a war. Village doctrine said to put the mission first, but given enough of that, there’d be no ninja left to _be_ the village. And really, if war was coming no matter what, wasn’t it better to have your whole team beside you? Wasn’t it better than going to battle while missing limbs, missing those people that could be trusted at your back?

But Hatake Sakumo had not been her father, and now, none of the things Kakashi thought or felt about the man could ever be conveyed to him. It made sense that Kakashi would, in his father’s absence, be angry at her, his friend.

“You,” Kakashi wheezed, “is…’sthat it?”

“You can be as angry as you want at me, for now,” Rin said, through gritted teeth, as she wobbled back to her feet. “Just for now.” Then, when Kakashi flinched as she stepped over to him, she knelt down deliberately slowly by his side, reaching out to check the state of his neck and his chest, just in case. “But the next time you break something of Rin-Rin’s, you’ll get something broken on you too.”

Kakashi snorted dismissively, but the sound was low and weak. When she started to heal the slight strain in his left shoulder, she had to pretend not to see the wetness trickling from his uncovered eyes.


	3. The early years (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin tries to get used to her new team. It's slow going, at least at first.

### (Rin, 10 years old)

Two years later, Kakashi was still angry at her.

Which was fine. War had come again, and this time, they were on the same team, and except for the fact that Rin hated the other two members of said team, everything was going okay.

Hating Minato-sensei for—and Rin didn’t like to admit this—somehow having gained the role of Kakashi’s number one role model ninja just by _existing_ didn’t mean she made things difficult for him. He was a good sensei; he was nice to her even though she unnerved him sometimes, and he was the first person she’d met in years that enjoyed discussing seals even more than she did. So she forgave him. Mostly.

Hating Uchiha Obito for somehow swanning into the role of Kakashi’s number one most hated ninja just by existing didn’t mean Rin made things difficult for him either, but. Sometimes, it was hard holding back.

She never knew quite how she felt about Obito. His family situation sucked. He was probably the clumsiest person she’d ever met. He learned best by doing, so he seemed slow sometimes, and he was not just understandably self-conscious about it, he was also the type to want to put up a pretence, to boast hard and hope like hell that he could follow it up somehow, because to do anything less was to accept mediocrity for ever… something like that.

Perhaps it said something about her fixation on Kakashi that she could think about how annoying Obito was in isolation, and think _well, if it was only that, I could stand him_. Sometimes, when she saw him doing disgustingly good deeds like rescuing claw-happy cats from trees and carrying bags for sharp-tongued old ladies, Rin couldn’t help but admit that she just might have maybe admired him, for his persistence at being a complete softie if nothing else.

But Obito wasn’t just sneakily kind, or openly annoying, or way too proud for his own good. He could also get the slightest thing wrong and have Kakashi _notice_ , the same Kakashi that made an art form out of ignoring Rin’s maybe-deliberate-but-who-knows mistakes.

She was (nominally) ten years old, for fuck’s sake. She didn’t _want_ a fixation on anyone. She didn’t want puberty to hit her early, though Mama had lately been dropping careful hints about certain consequences of their chakra-rich bloodline, and it was looking dreadfully like puberty would come for Rin sometime soon.

* * *

### (Rin, almost 11 years old)

A year later, her definitely-not-a-crush fixation on Kakashi was abruptly cured. Obito scraped his way into chunin, and was insufferable for four miserable months, and then they ran into a clutch of Iwa nin at just the wrong time, and Rin finally lost her temper, because he had the _gall_ to take a kunai in the back for her.

For two minutes, every moving thing with a strange signature died. And then Rin retracted her chakra scalpels and picked Obito up by the neck, and—

“Rin-Rin,” Kakashi said, his low, deadly serious tone entirely at odds with the name he’d just called her. “Please put down the dead last, okay?”

Obito whimpered. Obito still had a kunai in him, she could see the point of it poking through in front, and he was so _stupid_ … “You’re not like Rin-Rin,” she heard herself say, in a low, vicious almost-hiss. “That could have got you in the spine, and what would happen to your career then?”

Somehow, she managed to make herself ease up the grip she had on his throat. When she did, when Obito slumped away from her, Kakashi was there to catch him.

“I,” Obito choked out, “it wasn’t on purpose.” His breathing sped up as Rin approached, her hands now glowing green. “I—it—my body just moved—ugh—”

“Shut up,” Kakashi snapped. He then looked up at Rin, an urgent question in his normally flat gaze, but all he said was: “Nohara. Work quickly.”

“Shut up,” Rin muttered. She always worked as quickly as she could while out in the field. She didn’t need Kaka-baka to tell her to hurry it up. “Go search the bodies, okay? Your loser boyfriend’s safe with me.”

It wasn’t something she said to be teasing, just the sort of thing that slipped out when you were stressed and coming down from a panicky, killing high and not thinking too hard about every word that left your mouth. Surprisingly, though, the reaction it got, the way Kakashi went still, the way Obito’s eyes rounded behind his cracked goggles, it was all a bit… ahem.

Wordlessly, Kakashi gave over the support of Obito’s prone form into Rin’s slightly shaking hands, then walked over to the furthest corpse from them as quickly as he could. Obito just went on staring, his wide-eyed gaze flitting between Rin and Kakashi. For the next ten minutes, the disordered forest clearing they’d ended up in was utterly silent.

Then, because the kunai was out, and everything broken in Obito’s self-inflicted wound had been lined up and carefully resealed, and because Rin was having a shitty day and was thus in the frame of mind to be a shitty person, she leaned in a little and signed a command to Obito. Staring up at her, his pain-dulled gaze growing intent with curiosity, he signed back.

_Do it,_ Rin signed, emphatically. _Not doing, I stab._

Probably it said something about the way she came off in front of Obito that, even before today’s bloodbath, he wouldn’t have hesitated to believe such a threat from her. Glaring up at her, Obito gave vent to a not entirely exaggerated, meaty cough, and sure enough, Kakashi immediately looked over.

“He’s fine,” Rin said, brightly. “Rin-Rin asked him to, it’s okay.” There was never anything more satisfying than deflecting someone’s suspicion with nothing but the truth. “It’s almost done.”

“Hmph.” Kakashi returned his attention to the bloodied Iwa nin he’d been crouching over.

_No meaning,_ Obito clumsily signed. _Teammate._

And probably, he was one hundred percent right. Kakashi, much as he sniped at Obito during training, was (almost) always professional with him while they were in the field. The few times he failed to be professional were usually Obito’s fault, and even those little spats rarely got in the way of their mission objectives. Aside from all the sneering and the covert one-upmanship, Kakashi was a fairly decent, caring teammate to both of them.

That still didn’t change Rin’s deduction. The only people that had ever managed to hold Kakashi’s attention were all guys. Rin was an exception, but then Rin didn’t so much hold his attention as viciously scheme for it. Sure, Kakashi was like her, still just some dumb eleven-year-old, but. She saw the way he paid attention to Obito, and she couldn’t help but think about what it could mean.

“You’ll see, Obito-kun,” Rin whispered, as she tightened the bandage around his chest. “Rin-Rin is _never_ wrong about these things.”

As for the idle thoughts Rin had had about what it would feel like if Kakashi focused all that angry, sneering attention on her for once, they were already drowning, struggling for their pitiful lives against the onrushing tide of musings on just how awkward her teammates would be around each other if they really were in love.

* * *

After that incident, Rin couldn’t help but become a little more casual around Obito, half because it could only help her little investigation, and half because Kakashi couldn’t seem to keep from monitoring her whenever she chose to settle down next to Obito. Today, they were at Sensei’s girlfriend’s favourite ramen stall, and though Kakashi wasn’t obviously spying on Rin and Obito or even looking at them directly, his disdainful grunts always came in at just the right point in their conversation.

“All I’m saying,” Obito was saying, his voice muffled by the mouthful of ramen he had just slurped up, “is that with the Sharingan, with a really strong one, you _can_ kind of see chakra. So it’s obviously—”

“What if you don’t develop a really strong one, though?” Rin said, cutting him off. “Then all you have is the ability to see pretty well, which you could get with glasses, or, or with a good seal.”

“Not something a shrimp your age should be trying,” Kushina-san interjected, pausing to jab the dry end of her chopsticks into Rin’s side. Ugh, this was why Rin normally never sat within reach of her. Sadly, Kakashi had beaten her to the seat right next to the wall, so she was left crammed between Obito (who was next to Kakashi) and Kushina-san, and with nowhere to escape, since Minato-sensei had stolen her second-favourite spot at the other end of the bar. “You could melt your eyes that way, y’know.”

Obito coughed, his expression twisting with horror. “That—melting?”

Kushina-san grinned at him, her slightly sharp incisors adding a shark-like tinge to it. “Trust me, that’s not the worst that can happen. It’s horribly painful, but that’s because the nerves survive, y’know? A good medic can replace your eyes with a transplant, afterwards. If you screw up even worse, though, your whole face can—”

“No!” Obito yelled, his voice cracking as he hurried to cover his ears. “No, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to hear it!”

“Eh? But it’s only—”

“No, no, no, no, not listening…”

“But—”

“No! No! No! No!”

Somehow, even with how loud Obito was being in a bid to drown out the still-grinning Kushina-san, Kakashi’s disdainful huff was clearly audible to Rin. And of course, Minato-sensei’s pointed cough cut across everything, turning Kushina-san’s gleeful expression into something dramatically sad. “You never let me have any fun with them,” Kushina-san said. “As your team, they’re technically my kids too, and I barely ever see them these days, with how busy things are getting. Shouldn’t you cut me some slack?”

As she spoke, her voice got faster and higher, and she leant more and more in towards the now blushing Minato-sensei, causing Rin to suppress a knowing smirk. It had astonished for all of two minutes, finding out that their sensei had a girlfriend, at least until she saw the way said girlfriend treated him like something a cross between a huggable plush toy and a target dummy. To Rin, it made a kind of sense that Minato—their controlled, competent, calmly smiling, utterly unflappable jonin sensei—would end up with someone a little crazy.

“Kushina, we talked about this,” he was saying now, his stern expression at odds with the flush creeping up his neck. “Remember? We agreed you’d stop with the, with all the sealing accident stories, right?”

“Hmm?” Kushina-san said, her eyes innocently wide. “We did?”

“Yes,” Minato-sensei said, firmly, even as he squirmed under the arm Kushina-san had just slung around his shoulders. “So stop, okay?”

“Fine, fine, fine, I’ll stop.” Then, when Obito reluctantly lowered his hands away from his ears: “It’s not like little Rin-Rin needs to hear all those scary stories, right?”

Rin, who had had to suppress the urge to try and slap on an illustrative genjutsu to show off to Obito a little earlier, couldn’t help but hesitate for a moment. “Well, I don’t know. They’re not that—ow!” Surprisingly, instead of the usual under-the-table shock of lightning chakra from Kakashi, this time, it was a kick from Obito that stopped her mid-word. “Obito, you meanie, that _hurt_.”

“We weren’t done with our argument yet,” he said, his forceful tone a contrast to the way he had already scraped his barstool pointedly closer to Kakashi, putting a healthy amount of space between himself and Rin. “It’s, with the Sharingan, it’s more than just ‘seeing well’, I already have the best eyesight on the team, alright? When it’s active, you can see further, like, like crazy far away!”

“But you can’t see with your eyes shut,” Rin said, pointedly. “You can’t see behind your back. And even a weak Byakugan can let you see far away. Obviously, the Byakugan’s better.”

“It _isn’t_.”

“It is.”

“It isn’t!”

“Is.”

“It—”

“Can you two just agree to disagree?” Minato-sensei said, with the slightly strained smile that meant that if they didn’t, he would find some unpleasant way to make them do it. “Please?”

“Eh, Sensei, you can decide for us, right? You’ve worked with both Hyuuga and Uchiha, right?”

“Uh, as true as that is—”

“He’s just going to say they’re equal, you know,” Rin couldn’t help but interject. “Even though we all know the Byakugan’s the better one.”

“He wouldn’t!” Obito sat up straight, craning his neck so as to see over her head, and direct his pleading, bug-eyed gaze at Minato. “Right, sensei? They’re not equal, right?”

“Uh…”

“Time’s up,” Kushina-san said, and for a moment, all was shouting chaos as she surged to her feet and slung the only lightly struggling form of Minato-sensei over her shoulder. “Sorry, kids, I’m stealing him now. See you later!”

“Hey!” Obito yelled, deafeningly loud. “What about the bill, huh? You can’t just—argh! Did you see that? She just stuck us with the bill!”

“Awww,” Rin said, her voice as sugary as she could make it, “didn’t you notice? She did that to save him from you.”

“She did _not_ ,” Obito snapped. “I’m not—”

A familiar gloved hand slammed down onto the bar between them, pinning down a decent stack of ryo. “That enough?” Kakashi said, coldly, as if the unlucky person that deigned to disagree with his judgement would soon receive a kunai in the back. “Nohara. Training ground seven.” Then he was gone in a larger than needed swirl of leaves.

“What the hell?” Obito coughed, swatting at the leaves that had been blown at his face. “Is sparring the only thing in his stupid head?”

“No, dummy,” Rin said, pityingly, as she shifted her stool back from the bar. “He’s trying to save his sweetheart, just like Kushina-san did for Sensei.”

Obito, clever as he was despite all his clumsiness, saw the veiled threat implied by her joking statement, and was immediately on his guard. “I didn’t kick you that hard,” he said, his attempt at being casual foiled by the telltale crack in his voice. “Rin…?”

“You’re safe from me for now,” Rin said, smiling sweetly. “Kaka-kun will only come back after me if I don’t show up soon. See you tomorrow, Obito.” When she stepped up to try and give him a parting pat on his shoulder, he dodged away in a frantic scramble, falling onto the floor in a bid to get out of her reach, and that put a real smile on her face. “Aw, Rin-Rin just wanted to say goodbye.”

“You don’t need to touch me for that,” Obito muttered, struggling back to his feet. Even when he winced at the loud clatter of his fallen barstool knocking into another one as he tried to stand it up again, he didn’t take his narrowed gaze off of her. “Aren’t you leaving?”

“Hmph,” Rin said, pouting. “Rin-Rin knows when she’s not wanted.” Only then did she turn away, humming under her breath, hoping that Obito’s Sharingan came in slow when it did finally come in. It’d be a real shame if he magically got a way to spot her trap seals before she could refine them to blend in with nature chakra.


	4. The year that wouldn't end (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin's thirteenth year in her new world doesn't start off well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning that there's a reason why this is tagged with 'fix-it of sorts' ;D
> 
> And now, it's bridge time.

### (Rin, almost 13 years old)

Two years later, Rin was going through hell. Not puberty—that had kicked in with a vengeance a year ago, along with her long-unmissed period, but it hadn’t been as bad as she’d thought it would be.

The war, on the other hand…

Kakashi had made jonin late last year, off the back of an awful two-month stretch of their team running messages in the most dangerous part of the front, but he hadn’t gloated over it at all. And Obito, though cheerful as ever on the surface, was holding together by maybe one or two threads, torn between terror and disillusionment with the cruelty of the battlefield and the frantic desire to be in the thick of things just in case the next thing he saw helped him activate his Sharingan.

Rin used to think she was the sanest one on her team, not counting their scarily chipper sensei, but lately, it was hard. It wore on her, smiling, playing Rin-Rin one moment and then mincing up an enemy shinobi’s innards in the next. Her right arm had started to ache again recently, on and off, and though she knew she needed to rest it, she couldn’t.

 _Rin-Rin, you’ll be a cripple in your old age for sure,_ she couldn’t help but think. _That is, if you don’t die for the glory of Konoha first._

Then… the bridge. That fucking, pustulent, hell-cursed, godforsaken bridge.

Too many Iwa nin. The mission, the mission came first, and they had a plan, and it all still fell apart, because it turned out that Rin was no match for a seasoned Iwa jonin, even though she’d felt pretty sure that she was just one unlucky mission away from a field promotion.

She had her scalpels, but she didn’t have large enough chakra reserves to keep the blades strong enough to really cut through his wretched rock armour. She’d swear it was chakra-resistant or something. She’d already downed or killed the rest of them, so there was no way, no way, no way he’d let her go, and if she didn’t get him, if she didn’t drag him down with her—

“Rin? Rin!”

—he would try for her boys.

“Don’t come in!” Rin screamed, her senses alight, her every bit of attention fixed on the dull, muddy blur that was her enemy. “I’m holding him; finish the fucking mission!”

Did they listen to her?

Did they _ever_ listen to her?

“I do,” Obito rasped, from where the rock had pinned him. “It’s… it’s Bakashi that doesn’t. Not me.”

“Whose,” Kakashi wheezed, from where the rock had pinned him, “whose fucking idea was it to do the double blind rescue, huh? _Huh_?”

If Rin hadn’t loved them so much, if they weren’t both somewhat crushed in so many places, if she’d had the spare chakra to even think of it, she would 100 percent have given them both a nice, mercilessly hard punch to the solar plexus, and only then would she have put them under sedation.

The cave reeked of blood. The bridge, well, sensei had come nearly too late, but he was sorting that out, and would then head north to the rendezvous point to bring back assistance. Assistance Rin could absolutely not go for, because though Rin had all her limbs and was only a little crushed, tree running or plain running or maybe even walking was currently beyond her.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Rin murmured, even as she sent a stream of stabilizing chakra into Obito’s system through her too-tight grip on his shoulder. “I’m tired.”

“Sensei will be back soon,” Kakashi said, thinly. He was still wheezing, but of course he could still manage to sound one part comforting and one part condescending as he spoke. “Just a little longer, Nohara.”

“It’s Rin-Rin,” Rin snapped. His pulse was becoming increasingly choppy. He was likely going to be the last of his clan because he was gay for the determinedly oblivious Obito, but Rin had always thought she’d see him live to be an old, strict, cheerless man, silver-haired and handsome and still having silly conflicts with his dogs. “Don’t even think about breathing your last here. Don’t tell Rin-Rin to hold on when you won’t.”

“Rin-chan,” Obito said, his shoulder flexing in her grip. “Maybe—”

“Not you either,” Rin spat. “Shut up and keep breathing.” She could see the lights starting to dance in her peripheral vision. Her rings were almost dry. “Promise me.”

“I promise, Rin-chan.”

Kakashi said nothing. He was still breathing—barely—but his eyes were staring up into nothing, and for an ugly moment, Rin wanted nothing more than to let go of him if he wouldn’t even try, wouldn’t promise to hold on even if he knew it was a lie. And then Rin was sobbing soundlessly, portioning out what she knew was the second-to-last wave of stored chakra.

And then the earth around them shifted, _strained_ , and just like that, she was left holding nothing at all.

* * *

By the time Rin had the strength to talk again, it was two weeks later, and Obito’s needless funeral had come and gone.

She spoke in short phrases, when necessary. “I’m fine.” “I’m getting along.” “I miss him.” Standard stuff, all while she was calculating, relentlessly planning.

She had nothing to say to Kakashi. He’d been nearly unconscious when it happened, when Obito wilfully, _purposely_ … and even if Kakashi had been fully awake, he’d not been in the condition to do anything.

She didn’t blame him, but. She was angry.

Which was why she waited till the very last possible moment to tell him that she was leaving, and she made very sure he was bound to within an inch of his life and sealed for good measure while she told him why she was leaving.

“You’re insane,” Kakashi said, his formerly hollow gaze now alight with worry. “Rin, it’s—you can’t do this. He wouldn’t have wanted—”

“Kaka-baka doesn’t have to believe Rin-Rin,” Rin said, cutting him off with a brief, fierce glare. “Kaka-baka just needs to keep his stupid mouth shut, okay? Two days should do it.”

“Rin.”

“You owe him and Rin-Rin your life,” Rin snapped. “Consider this as paying up.”

“Rin, _please_ ,” Kakashi said, sounding so anguished that she couldn’t help but falter. Then he started rolling violently around the room, knocking heavily into his few bits of furniture, obviously making a ruckus in a bid to be heard. “Rin!”

“You’ll know I’m right, someday,” Rin said, over her shoulder, as she wriggled out of his open window. “Rin-Rin is always right.”

* * *

For a day, Rin noticed no signs of pursuit. Somehow, that hurt more than anything else, knowing, just knowing that that was Kakashi’s mercy, Kakashi’s last gift to her.

She had set the seals binding him to release within an hour. She’d felt sure that, even if she set them for long-term release, a certain someone would have gone by Kakashi’s shitty apartment well in time to have a shot at ruining the whole operation. And because Rin was (sort of) a genius, she’d planned for everything, planned around her meddling sensei, and so it wasn’t until she was almost at the remains of the shitdamned bridge that Minato-sensei caught up to her.

“Rin,” Minato said, from a careful, calculated distance, not within the reach of her extended chakra spikes, but not so far away that he couldn’t easily get the jump on her even without Hiraishin. “I want you to reconsider.” Minato-sensei—no, Minato-san, kind as he was, cheerful as he was, he’d always been able to see that Rin’s act was hiding a certain something. Or, more correctly, hiding the utter _lack_ of a certain something, something that all good ninja needed. “You think you know what you’re walking into if you abandon the village, I know, but…”

“What if I want to walk into it?”

“Rin, you know how serious this is. Can you at least—”

“Minato-san, you have two choices. Choice number one, you seal Rin-Rin’s tongue, or whatever, and make it so Rin-Rin can’t betray Konoha, which means you can let Rin-Rin go.”

“ _Rin._ ”

“Choice number two,” Rin sang, “is the sad one. Don’t choose it unless you want to cry…” Scalpels blazing, shoulders relaxed, Rin had never felt more comfortable in her own skin, facing her definite defeat on a high, twisted path not far from the ruins of the bridge she and her team had bled to destroy.

All the while, just like it had been every day since she’d lost hold of Obito’s clammy, blood-drenched shoulder, there was a pulsing thread of _something_ , something that wound lazily around her fourth ring and then was swallowed by said ring. Smiling, Rin couldn’t help but finger the ring for a moment, imagining what on earth Obito might be doing at this very point in time.

Fighting Minato when he had that look on his face was a really bad idea. Good thing it wasn’t really Rin-Rin standing here opposite him, flexing and stretching.

“I’ll give you one more chance,” Minato said, his gaze intent, his voice wavering only a little. “Come back with me, or else…”

Grinning, Rin (Rin-Rin-Rin, since she was the third clone today) _moved_. Delaying him didn’t mean she couldn’t have fun, couldn’t play around a little and see if some of her more underhanded tricks could give her former sensei some trouble.

* * *

The southern half of Grass Country was Rin’s first planned stop. She’d never even headed for the cave near the ruined bridge to begin with, reasoning that if her rings and her instincts were wrong, it wouldn’t hurt Obito’s shell one bit to wait another month or two for her.

Also, if her rings were right, if Obito was truly still alive, she couldn’t imagine him holing up in that half-collapsed cave for long. It’d been almost a month since his supposed death, and that was more than enough time for him to drag himself out and wander into the nearest township for food, or for him to get snatched up by some enterprising hidden village with a lust for the Uchiha bloodline.

“Joke’s on them, if someone like that really picks him up,” Rin murmured, into her hastily made cup of tea. “Not an immediate investment at all, considering he never even activated those stupid eyes.”

She didn’t think too hard about what kind of suffering Obito might meet, as a longer term investment in the hands of Iwa, Kumo or Suna. It was a nice day at a nice inn full of people that hadn’t given her walking in to order lunch a second glance, even though she was as hooded and cloaked as a desperately stupid criminal. She wasn’t going to ruin it by thinking of such awful things.

Best to think of them when she’d found Obito, and could take payment from his captors for every hair they’d harmed on his head.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8/14/19 note: minor edit to normalize country/village names. And yeah 'Grass Country' technically doesn't exist but oh well.


	5. Interlude: Kakashi's thoughts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi would rather die than admit just how often he thought of Nohara Rin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact, when I started this story, it was in a file named 'dark kaka' because I _love_ nukenin!Kakashi takes, and HOBVIOUSLY that's what would result from Rin being a lil' bit evil/crazy (at least wrt Konoha norms). But then I actually started writing from OC!Rin's POV and got too charmed with her to stop >.>
> 
> With Rin having taken such a big step last chapter, it feels fitting to lapse into Kakashi's POV for a little bit now. More from his or other characters' POVs may come later on in the story, but after this chapter, we'll go right back to hearing from Rin.

### on swearing

Kakashi didn’t remember the first time he swore at anyone. He had always learned and practised every new word he heard, if not always in front of other people.

He did remember the first time he swore at Nohara, and saw her eyes widen more than they usually did when she was trying to get someone to believe her lies. After that, he simply couldn’t help himself, even though it meant his teachers giving him disappointed looks, and Tousan sighing whenever he was complained to.

It wasn’t like swearing at her even worked to shut her up—nothing did. But it got a real reaction, got her to stare at him for a moment instead of smiling emptily, so he leaned on it again and again whenever he was around her.

He never called her any really unpleasant names, half because that would have been more rude than he was willing to be even to her, and half because he’d seen what she did to the one boy that had been foolish enough to let her hear him calling her a bitch. She’d waited until they were matched in a spar and taken him down hard, and though she hadn’t seemed to do anything out of the ordinary during their fight, the boy’s tongue had been swollen and unusable for the rest of the week.

“Rin-Rin is so sorry, Riku-kun,” she’d said. “Rin-Rin didn’t mean to injure you like that.” But, sincere as she had sounded and looked and _felt_ , Kakashi and much of the class had instinctively understood that her apology meant nothing. Nohara never did anything she didn’t want to do, not without making some unfortunate Academy chunin pay for it. Tokuda Riku had nodded his acceptance of her empty words and never spoken in her presence again.

### on fear

The first time Kakashi was afraid of (for) Rin, it happened by accident. They had never been on the same team before, and her sometimes weird, sometimes outrageous behaviour during Academy survival exercises had always seemed to him like something she would… not grow out of, but put aside, when there were actual stakes involved.

Even so, he’d assumed that, while she would likely drop the cute blinking and sing-song tone during actual combat, she wouldn’t be anything other than breezy the whole way through. And that if things went wrong, she would wilt, not quite as dramatically as she did when she thought she wasn’t getting her way, but close enough that he could still mock her for it in the back of his mind.

Then, midway through a tough but doable scrap with an oversized, bloodthirsty Iwa team, Obito got in the way of a strike intended for her, and suddenly, Rin became a blur of steel and rage. Her usual surgical strikes turned into vicious disembowellings; her rings sparked, and every slash she dished out left behind ugly chakra burns.

Kakashi, watching her, struggling to keep up with her, got sprayed with blood and splashed with intestinal fluid. At the end of it all, when she turned her unfocused, distorted gaze on Obito’s injured, bent-over form, Kakashi had to push himself to walk that way as well, and could not manage to muster the courage to get between her and the other boy.

He managed to get her to stop snarling somehow, managed to get her to drop Obito into his arms. He didn’t know how he sounded as he did it, but he did see that unnamed look in her eyes die down, reeled back under her usual not-quite-blankness.

Then, just as she was preparing to heal Obito, she made some typical quip about Obito being his boyfriend—the subject matter being new, but the careless, yet needling tone it was said in being all too familiar—and suddenly Kakashi could not bear to spend another moment in her vicinity.

It wasn’t the topic. It definitely wasn’t the topic. It was the way she’d said brought it up, the way the line of her shoulders had already relaxed, as if the girl she’d just been—the _murderer_ —no longer existed, and in her place was Kakashi’s supposed friend, a kunoichi too crazy to take the safer hospital posting rather than wade back out onto the battle lines with him.

_She can’t go on like that,_ he’d thought, as he went through the motions of searching the fallen. _How does she hide it?_ But he didn’t really have to ask how she hid it, he’d _seen it_ , and the ease with which she pulled her usual manner on like a comfortable old shirt made him feel sick.

_I’ll tell Sensei,_ Kakashi had thought. _He’ll handle it._

### on desertion

Sensei did not handle it. He’d said he would, but with the war, with missions as fast-paced and gruelling as they were, there wasn’t much time. And it wasn’t like Kakashi didn’t know the obstacle Sensei was up against; Rin lied with every other word and had passed her few psychological profiles well enough to keep going back out, and she didn’t like Sensei. Or she didn’t trust him, and though it had never really come up as an issue even on their worst missions, the fact of it was always in the back of Kakashi’s mind, and he knew it meant that she wouldn’t let Sensei help her properly.

Then Obito died—“ _sacrificed himself,_ ” Sensei said, in a low, colourless tone that wasn’t like him at all—and Rin went away somewhere inside her head, and all Kakashi could do was visit her in the hospital. Then visit her at home, all while snooping frantically, trying to figure out who else he could rope in to help bring her back.

Yamanaka Yumi had been captured and hopefully (for her sake) killed by Kumo three months ago, so she was a no-go. Kanno Umeko was pulling triple shifts in the hospital, and couldn’t visit more than once in a while. The Okamoto boy Kakashi had always been suspicious of was off on some hush-hush, long-term mission, and he’d hated clan-born kids enough that Kakashi would have had second thoughts about asking him to commiserate with Rin when her lost teammate had been one. Gai was due back on the front lines tomorrow as a runner, and even if he hadn’t been, Rin was never quite herself around him.

For one thing, she always managed a real, friendly smile for Gai. Not a smirk, not the demure, polite thing she handed out to people she didn’t feel like antagonizing (yet), and not even the sweet, exaggerated curve she only brought out when she was up to something and didn’t care if you knew it.

On his last visit to her, Gai made her smile the way he always did: push-ups, a rambling monologue about who made the best taiyaki in the west quarter, and a brief anecdote about how he was trying to find someone to teach him Crow Style kicks, but hadn’t found anyone who knew enough to correct him properly yet. Rin smiled, patted his muscular arm, and had said, when he earnestly asked how she was doing, that she was coping. That she was getting along.

When Gai left, and Kakashi asked her why she was such a liar, she smiled at him too, and went right back to ignoring him like he wasn’t even there.

* * *

In a way, it wasn’t a complete surprise to wake to her bending in over him one night, finally _looking_ at him again, and speaking of desertion.

Naturally she didn’t call it that. No, Rin said she was going to take a little trip south. That she’d look around near the bridge, to see if she could find anything.

(They hadn’t had time to dig out Obito’s body. Iwa had sent too many reinforcements.)

Kakashi begged her not to go— _begged her_ —but he’d known already that she wouldn’t listen. She’d always been a little strange about Obito, scorning and teasing him one moment and being dreadfully protective of him in the next. It made sense that, having no one left in the village to worry about, she’d decided to go after Obito instead.

Everyone else in the village that was even peripherally important to her could take care of themselves. Her parents were medic-nin, and would very likely never see battle unless the worst happened. Kakashi was a jonin. Gai was one too. Her other friends were either dead, seconded to the hospital, or in deep cover, and thus beyond her reach. It made sense that, Rin being Rin, she would look at all these facts and decide that now was the best time to walk away.

Kakashi still felt betrayed. _You were my friend first,_ he thought, and rolled around in his bonds like an idiot, like he couldn’t sense the slightly fuzzy, indistinct feel of one of the generic sound-dampening boundary seals in place. He’d thought that showing some uncharacteristic emotion might make her hesitate, might make her think again.

It didn’t.

* * *

It took Kakashi a day to leave his apartment. After the seals had released him, he’d just lain where he was, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Then, because he was finally too hungry to keep lying there, he’d got up and shuffled over to his small kitchen, intent on making a new pot of rice, only to find that Rin had made one for him and plastered it with her usual smiley faces and preservation seals.

Looking at his much-abused pot made him freeze for a few minutes, unsure of whether what he most wanted was to breathe out fire and melt it down and burn down his apartment around him while he did it, or…

Kakashi’s shoulders sagged. He opened his cupboards and drawers, acquiring a bowl and cup and eating utensils, and then he went pawing through the fridge for the leftover miso from two days ago.

As always, the rice was good. Rin had— _had_ had a weird fascination with getting it turned out perfectly. Kakashi’s eyes stung as he ate, but no tears fell. _I thought she was punishing me,_ he was already telling himself, telling his future interrogators. _I thought it had to be a really tasteless prank._

He knew they wouldn’t really believe him, but he knew he was still going to try, going to help her spin one last story. If she hadn’t left, if she’d changed her mind, it would give her time to come back, time to pretend she hadn’t really meant to leave. If she _had_ left, Kakashi needed to make sure he didn’t look like he was planning to follow her, but he also needed to make sure he showed an expected amount of softheartedness towards a (former) teammate.

He didn’t want this holding him back, after all. He wanted power. He wanted to be the kind of person that could have held out in the cave, that wouldn’t have _fainted_ , that wouldn’t have been in such bad condition that even Obito judged it best to die in his stead. He wanted to be the kind of person Rin couldn’t leave, because if she did, she knew he had only to reach out to drag her back.

Kakashi ate and ate and ate, his eyes burning, a pair of useless tears finally falling, only to be scrubbed away with the back of one steady hand. _You’re being irrational,_ he told himself. _You know Sensei will catch her._

If Sensei failed again, though, he would be ready. It’d take some time—maybe years—but someday, Kakashi would be ready. He’d bring Rin back, and she would never be able to abandon him again.


	6. The year that wouldn't end (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin learns all sorts of things while on the run. So do the people she meets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle reminder of the CNTW tag on this story.
> 
> Also, this is where the OP train starts rolling, which _should_ somewhat balance the angsty stuff out.

### (Rin, still almost 13 years old)

The year dragged on. Rin gained a fine-grained, in-depth knowledge of just how many no-name border towns there were that were only just in, or not quite in Fire Country. Worse, she gained an unholy appreciation for the few towns that could boast any kind of inn.

Even with the supplies she’d packed, and her two lifetimes’ worth of knowledge of how to rough it in varying types of terrain, Rin grew very tired of sleeping on straw, in mud, in the trees, amongst the grass, etc etc, on and on and on. Proper baths were difficult to jerry rig when away from a convenient water source, and even when she could spare the chakra to unseal a couple buckets and heat up some water to wash with, being that vulnerable out in the open took most of the pleasure out of it.

In the absence of orders, though, her day-to-day struggles were manageable. Loneliness was a problem, but she coped. She made it her business to chat with anyone who’d respond in turn whenever she was in town, and that did for some of it. As for the rest, she’d long since known that talking to herself or her mental approximation of her friends while careful to keep said conversations safely obscured by an auditory genjutsu was surprisingly soothing.

(Talking to friends she no longer quite remembered was _not_ soothing, so she didn’t do that.)

Money was a perpetual problem. Even with the war over, the smaller jobs were slow to trickle back onto the market in a large enough volume that some of them could fall to undersized nukenin like her, so when she couldn’t win anything worth her time, she transformed into a slightly older boy and ran shitty errands and did back-breaking farm work and combed empty battlefields for stray weapons and junk to sell.

Rin learned all sorts of things. How much semi-decent tea could cost, and what that cost said about the welfare of the area you bought it in. How to bargain in a way that read as aggressive but ultimately polite. How to project just the right mix of professionalism and bloodthirstiness to win an escort detail over someone else. She even learned how to walk and talk somewhat like a Rivers native, or at least the mumble-mouthed, border town version of one.

(She grew quite fond of the way so many border town accents sounded similar to each other, their words slower, their pitch never quite matching Fire Country standard or whatever else it was they were mixing in.)

Other than money, the thing that limited Rin most was the constant, low-level anxiety she felt, the awareness that she was it. That if she overslept, if she miscalculated her rations, if she went a little bit off trail in the wrong direction, she was fucked.

She’d thought, at first, that lingering in the rough vicinity of Konoha was what was keeping her on edge, only to find that her anxiety increased the further she trudged into Wind. _I’m just not used to the desert,_ she thought. _I should give it time._ But she couldn’t bear to give it more than three days before she began looping around back towards the border.

Sticking near Fire Country wasn’t the worst idea, mind. Her likeness hadn’t yet shown up in any of the newest batch of bingo books. And of course the longer it had been since Obito’s supposed demise, the more likely it was that he’d worked his way back into Fire.

It was starting to bother her that she hadn’t seen hide or hair of Obito, despite a teeth-grittingly nervous month of scouring the border with Iwa and sneaking as close as she could get to the ruins of the shitdamned bridge. At this point, even with the ring she’d attuned to him still resonating, Rin already expected to only turn up his purse (a hideous cotton thing that she’d painstakingly embroidered with his initials) or his desecrated body, and had been searching with that in mind, and yet there were still no leads.

Sighing, Rin slowed, adjusted her pack to a slightly more comfortable position. It was time to think of something else, something other than the ache in her feet and the powerlessness she felt. _I probably won’t find him today,_ she thought, _but it won’t stop me from looking tomorrow._ And in between now and then, she might as well mull over the new iteration in the sound-dampening seal she was working on, so she could maybe practice writing it out tonight.

* * *

Two towns and three weeks away from that day, the thing Rin had unconsciously been dreading finally came to pass. Some Kiri nin swaggered into the overpriced inn where she was currently staying, and though they didn’t look directly at her, there was a chill down the back of her spine, a thing that said _run_.

Surging to her feet and breaking into a panicked run was not the way to go; it’d just make it easier for them to catch her. So Rin eyed the four men— _three jonin, one maybe-chunin, fuck fuck fuck_ —the same way a wary local or nukenin would. She finished her tea in only slightly hasty sips, all while cursing the fact that she’d been too tired on the trip into town to stomach bolting on a henge. She waited until at least two other spooked older men had walked out the front door, and then she paid up and tried to do the same.

Tried. The shocked yell of the server between her and the Kiri nin ended in a choked gurgle, even as one of the men appeared in the doorway before her, kicking the door shut with an unnecessary slam.

“Come here,” that man said, with a smile that said he’d _love_ it if she didn’t, if she made it so that he had to hurt her. Shivering, Rin walked right into his eager grasp, because the place to do her best to try and gut him was not here, not when she could still hear fading gurgles, and the low, panicked gasps of people trying to be as small and unnoticeable as possible. “Good girl.”

As he half marched, half dragged her out of the inn, and then all the way down the eerily quiet central thoroughfare, no one would meet her eye. Rin didn’t know why it offended her, but it really did, even though she’d lived in places like here, for the last two or three months, places where people turned a blind eye and didn’t get involved unless it was in their absolute best interest.

 _I’ll come back,_ she told herself, coldly. _If any of them sold Rin-Rin out…_

But that was getting ahead of herself. Unsure of what act would work best, Rin defaulted to teary, terrified silence, hoping against hope that none of them were any kind of sensor, the kind that could read the fury boiling beneath.

She measured their relative strength. The man who’d blocked her at the door, grinning nastily, was neither the weakest or the strongest, and he was to her right. The weakest man, the one with glossy brown hair and a strange feel to his chakra, was right ahead of her. The strongest (scar, black hair, dead eyed) was behind her, his hand resting ominously on the hilt of his sheathed sword. The next strongest was to her left, tall and spindly and smiling in a way that looked friendly, but was definitely not being received as such by the townsfolk that ducked their heads as he walked past.

She didn’t know why they’d picked her. Why they’d gone through some now glassy-eyed young man to get in her way. Rin hadn’t been the only woman in the main room of the inn, and hadn’t been the only ninja, either, if she’d read the snoozing older woman in the corner opposite from her table right.

She was still considering the angles, still strung tight from imagining just how to cut her way through the restrictive square they formed around her, when the man behind her darted forward and struck her on the back of her head.

* * *

Almost losing consciousness sucked. Almost losing consciousness, and then having to play limp noodle to a man that grumbled about her surprising weight as he tossed her roughly over his shoulder _really_ sucked.

For a long time after that, all Rin could feel was that asshole’s shoulder digging into her stomach, along with the push-pull sickness of being carried along during his shunshin. She had to stop herself over and over again from shifting her falsely limp weight in a way that would interfere. From stabbing the man carrying her through the iron grip he had on her shoulder and hip.

 _You want to live,_ she told herself, over and over again. _Wait for the best moment. Wait till you’re sure you can take them._ Then the chakra-restraining cuffs went on (no warning, they didn’t even fucking stop to set her down before chaining her ankles and her wrists), and she told herself not to panic. The cuffs were poorly made; a concentrated pulse from her rings could crack them. She just needed the right moment.

Then the man that had been cutting away her shirt and her mesh vest wiped down her belly with alcohol, and uncapped a jar that stank of sealing ink, and she started to tell herself different things.

 _You don’t want to die._ They thought Rin was only half awake; she had to keep it that way until they’d put their guard down long enough that she might just have a chance. The pain was enough that she wanted to not be awake at all, but if she truly fell unconscious, that would mean her missing each hateful curve they cut and painted onto the skin of her belly, and she would not allow that. She _wouldn’t_.

 _You want to kill them._ Self-explanatory. Slightly more motivating than fighting to live, when they started on the innermost circle of the seal, the one where the incompleteness, the wrongness of the pattern was so obvious that she wanted to do more than whimper, she wanted to tear her skin off and scream until she went hoarse, and—she couldn’t. She couldn’t.

Then they pressed the cool, slightly damp side of an old clay jar against her bloodied skin, and she was screaming despite all the promises she made herself.

_Live._

_Kill them._

_KILL THEM._

The maybe-chunin was dotting in an extra seal right above her heart, after having squeezed her there, gently. “Looks old enough to me,” someone said, and though it wasn’t ideal to begin then—chakra in her lungs, not hers, the thing, the monster that used to be in the water in the jar, focus—it was a good enough time to start.

Then for a little bit, the chakra she had forced free was everywhere, and Rin felt like a bloated, terrified softshell something, hard outside, soft inside, _what’s in me get it OUT_ , and then her rings blazed a path that went all the way to her rapidly beating heart, and she passed out.

* * *

Some time later, Rin surfaced again, groping her way to consciousness, half-convinced she was still in her bed at home (any home). But the weird buzz beneath her dry-feeling skin made her open her aching eyes, and it wasn’t long before she remembered.

 _Huh,_ she thought, blinking blearily at the dark, star-studded sky above her. _Didn’t they take me in the afternoon?_

 _Wait. Why can I even see the—_ Her thoughts sped up, then compressed, aided by her lacklustre attempt at moving her limbs, because she could now feel the softness of more than just blood squishing beneath her.

Couldn’t just be hers. Using chakra, the tiniest bit, not good, not good, smaller, could that even… god, was she sensing correctly? There was that Kiri-type fluidness, to the dispersing drifts of chakra surrounding her, but. It didn’t make sense.

“It hurts,” someone said, in a small voice that was so— _loud_ —that Rin went still, her gaze flitting about her, wondering how the fuck she’d missed them. “I’m, I’m sorry.”

“Who,” Rin found herself saying, then stopped, shoving aside the urge to shake her head. That wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t. “Where—are you close?”

The someone didn’t say anything, but they sighed, and Rin almost screamed because she could feel it, somehow, inside, the thing in her chakra was _moving_ —

“Sorry,” it said, hastily. “I wouldn’t move if I could, it’s just that the seal space is too small.”

At least they sounded polite. For a chakra monster.

Somehow, the little silence that followed that half-hysterical thought of Rin’s felt like someone was looking at her, and they were deeply disappointed.

“It’s not,” Rin said, through numb lips, and then thought, _oh, I’m an idiot._

And then thought: _I didn’t mean it badly._

The monster was still moving, just slowly, in what was starting to feel like a careful, deliberate pattern. Trying, perhaps, not to further stress her already overloaded chakra pathways.

 _You see,_ Rin thought, as brightly as could be done under present circumstances, _I’m a monster too._

* * *


	7. The year that wouldn't end (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin meets an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the new cannibalism tag. Will also just pause to say that yes, this is a 100% weird idfic, and probably this should have been stated up front. But now you are warned! If you want a specific warning re who gets ate, see the endnote.

### (Rin, _still_ almost 13 years old)

Naturally, things weren’t smooth sailing after that, the two monsters, inner and outer, Rin and San, in perfect, sympathetic harmony. The chakra monster hummed in response to Rin’s sort-of apology, but when she asked about how much seal space it thought would be enough to comfortably contain it, it went ominously silent.

“I can’t,” Rin panted, as she continued trudging toward the nearest standing tree in sight, “I can’t keep going on like this. Just walking is so fucking difficult.” She didn’t know why her first instinct was to talk to the monster in her gut aloud, but she couldn’t seem to keep from doing it. “Rin-Rin’s pretty good at sealing, you know. Rin-Rin can probably figure out a way to fix this shitty thing.”

She wasn’t at all sure she could, and she knew the monster could feel that, and she had to stop calling it that because it didn’t like it, and she—

“I’m not an it,” the monster said. It—they were unhappy with her. “I’m male.”

“Okay,” Rin said, blinking away her useless tears of frustration. “What do I call you? And please tell me you’re not actually speaking out loud, like Rin-Rin.”

The monster paused. “I’m called—”

He hesitated.

“Give me a fake fucking name,” Rin said, through gritted teeth, “or I swear to all the gods, Rin-Rin will—” She couldn’t threaten it with death. Him. She couldn’t. She would probably need to die as well, and she didn’t want to die, even though she felt too big and too small and somehow sloshy, and was leaving chakra burns as footprints as she wove through the charred tree trunks. “I just want a name. Any name.”

“Then… San?”

She wanted to throttle him. “Three?” she spat. “ _Really?_ ”

“Y-yes.”

“You’re older than Rin-Rin, for fuck’s sake!” He had to be, right? Bijuu had been around when Konoha was still being founded. “Surely you can think of a better—hn,” and she paused, gulping, as another movement fried her senses. “Ugh.”

“Sorry.”

Rin couldn’t help but laugh, then, even though she knew she sounded a little like she was dying. “So polite,” she whispered. “Even though all this couldn’t possibly be your fault.”

Naturally, they both knew she didn’t think that. She couldn’t not suspect him, polite and sorry as he was, because even Before, she’d been a suspicious bitch, prone to thinking about all the bad reasons someone could be smiling at her first.

“Before?” San asked, hesitantly, and because Rin was probably dying, she grinned, and did her best to tell him nearly everything.

* * *

She was still discussing the convoluted, very nearly illogical reasoning behind why her House had gone to war yet again shortly before her death when she— _they_ —sensed something approaching, something sharp and familiar enough to bring tears to her eyes.

Rin stopped. Backed into a place where the thin moonlight came down through a gap in the blasted trees, so he could better see just why he couldn’t come closer (“Who?” “Hatake Kakashi, my oldest friend.” “And you made fun of _my_ name.”). “Keep to ten lengths out, unless you want Rin-Rin to fry you with chakra.”

Somehow, she wasn’t expecting Kakashi to be another inch or so taller. He’d always looked down his nose at her, but now, she thought he might be able to do it without needing to lift his chin a bit, and it felt really really weird.

When he saw her, his eyes widened for an instant, taking in her bloodied, half-naked form, and oh, wasn’t it just the _best_ that she’d fucking forgotten all about it as she wandered through the forest, high as beans, talking to her invisible chakra friend? “I—”

“What happened?”

Rin sighed. Had she really missed that tone of his, frustration and condescension and don’t-waste-my-time, all wrapped up in one annoyingly smooth package? “Kiri nin picked Rin-Rin up,” she said. “Then Rin-Rin put them down.”

Kakashi’s gaze was levelled at her stomach now, and while Rin was almost sure the cuts for the seal had already healed (don’t even start about how weird it was to feel San’s chakra healing the hurts it left behind), she was also quite sure she was using enough chakra on trying to keep her brain working so she could walk and talk like a normal person that the rest of the seal pattern, and indeed every other seal on her body might be visible. She was not going to kill Kakashi. She was not going to need to kill him. She _wasn’t_. “Did you find him, before… that?”

“Huh?”

Oh. _Oh_.

“I, uh—”

“You didn’t, then.” That was definitely disappointment; the tell-tale crease had appeared between his eyebrows. “Are you going to be sensible when I bring you in?”

Rin smiled. _Give me just a little more, San,_ she said, and then took the smallest possible portion of the wave bulging through her pathways, and lashed it at the ground separating her and Kakashi. “When has Rin-Rin ever been sensible?” There was something in her voice, a ghost of the thing in her, and it made Kakashi look at her as if she had cut herself open and started dancing and shrieking like a madman in front of him, and perhaps, um, maybe she’d overdone it? “It’s only been a few months. Rin-Rin will dig him out, it’s a promise, okay?”

“You—”

Another signature inched close, one that was hiding, one that she wouldn’t have been able to sense before she had too much chakra not to let it crawl all over everything in the half-mile behind her. Everything including a signature that _burned_ in a way that was painfully familiar.

Rin spun toward its direction and darted after it. _No shunshin,_ she told herself, because spending chakra on that would just fry everything, but it was hard to only run, because Obito was faster than her if you didn’t count chakra, and he was _using it_ to _run away_ from her after _three fucking months_. “Flank him!”

Kakashi was already flashing ahead, faster than she’d ever seen him before, and then— “You moron!”

Obito turned. Kicked. Because of course this was the right time to start fucking fighting, right when they hadn’t seen him in ages because he had been _dead_ , and Rin was still pulsing with someone else’s chakra and couldn’t risk getting close lest she fry them both.

Angry, she bit down on her tongue and filtered as best as she could, and jammed almost-clean earth chakra right up under where Kakashi was trying to murder Obito, or maybe hug him, and Obito was doing the same thing back. Thankfully, there wasn’t an earthquake, the earth just softened and leaped a bit, clamping at both boys’ legs until they couldn’t move. “Are you okay? Did I break anything?”

Panting silence was her only answer at first. Then: “I’m fine.” Kakashi. The low grunt that followed that must have been Obito.

He didn’t look right, even from this distance. His face, though shadowed by the hooded cloak he was wearing, had a rough, heavily scarred texture, and his right hand was strangely pale. Rin ached to put her hands on him, and her chakra—just hers, no offence to San—in him. She didn’t know what kind of quack had pieced him back together. “Please,” Rin said, sinking into a tired, jittery crouch, “don’t ever do that again.”

Obito coughed. It sounded nearly as meaty and awful as it had that one time she’d threatened him into coughing in a bid to detect Kakashi’s love for him, and she felt suddenly, deeply guilty for what she’d done then. Guilty that she’d thought it a good idea to make him do things the way she wanted them because he was afraid of what she’d do if he didn’t obey. “I’m not going back to the village.”

It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. His breathing was hoarse, heavy. Rin couldn’t help but think that he’d only managed to sneak up on them from gods knew where because he hadn’t been using much in the way of chakra. He’d kept up with Kakashi during their stupid little fight, but she’d seen one of his eyes flashing a telltale red, so that had to explain it.

If his fitness was compromised to this extent, compromised enough that he needed his new Sharingan to keep up when Kakashi was only trying to detain him, his future career as an active-duty shinobi was in doubt. And that was if you considered just him, and not the name he carried, and the expectations that he’d failed for so very long. The Uchiha would not welcome him back, would be more likely to turn a blind eye to whatever the Hokage decided to do with him.

And if anyone had helped him, anyone Konoha could not tolerate having had their hands on a mid-level chunin for three months…

“I’m not going back,” Obito said again, his voice trembling. “Got it?”

“Nonsense,” Kakashi said, his voice colder than Rin had ever heard it. “If I have to—”

“You’ll what?” Rin said, deliberately making her voice loud enough that it overpowered his. “Drag him, and have him die on the way?” Slowly, she rose to her feet, grimacing as she did so, since San chose right then to shift inside her again. “Come on, it’s no big deal if he takes his time going back, right? He can stay with Rin-Rin while he figures things out.”

“I don’t need to figure anything out,” Obito said, emphatically, his low, hoarse voice making it sound like a snarl. “I already said it, didn’t I? I’m not going back. I’m _never_ going back.”

“Why?” Kakashi asked, his voice dangerously even. “So that, the next time I see you, you can be missing both eyes?”

Rin froze, then moved, hastily, only just quickly enough that she finally caught sight of what Obito had been using his hood to hide from her ever since she pinned him and Kakashi down. “What happened?” The overlap thing was happening with her voice again, but she couldn’t help it, she couldn’t go over there, and it _hurt_. “Who took it?”

Obito ducked his head. “I did,” he said, carelessly. All she could think of was how hoarse he still sounded, as if he’d screamed so much that he’d ruined his voice. As if someone had made him scream, and he was just pretending something else to save face. “The cave-in, you know. Pushing the two of you out didn’t leave me enough chakra to fully shield my head.”

She couldn’t go over there, because if she did, she would _strangle him_. “Who took it.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Is that why you can’t even look at me?” Rin wanted to move, and didn’t. She breathed in and out, wishing San wasn’t so fucking big, wishing she could have a prayer of tamping down the constant spill of his chakra. “Look here. _Tell_ Rin-Rin who took your eye, or—”

Kakashi tensed, almost at the same time that Obito stiffened, and the wind changed, bringing with it the suffocating smell of dried blood and ripening viscera, and, beneath it, something that smelled incongruously like Mama’s spicy hotpot broth. Rin spun around, her hungry gaze aimed in the direction Obito’s one, half-closed eye had been looking, and it was only because she’d turned so quickly that she saw it, that flash of pasty white.

She didn’t realize she was chasing it until she heard Kakashi land and then leap from a branch behind her, and then heard Obito’s slightly heavier tread on another branch to her left. “Don’t—”

She didn’t know which of them warned her, but it came too late, a mass of vines were already reaching out to her, binding, tangling, attempting to stop her. Grinning, Rin set her rings alight with a sliver of San’s caustic chakra, burning her way past and round and through. The delicious smell ahead of her intensified. Leap and dart and burn and seal and _reach out_ and _bite_ , and her first thought was that it—the thing her scaly, chakra-enhanced hands had caught—didn’t taste anything like the fat, juicy dumpling her instincts were telling her it was, but it was still delicious.

Also, it was alive, and screaming, and somewhere deep down, Rin couldn’t help but feel pleased. Someone should be hurting right now, what with all that had happened, Obito’s eye and Kakashi’s dead gaze and the fact that someone had stuffed a motherfucking tailed beast into Rin’s stomach, a beast that was suddenly, uncharacteristically _hungry_ , and apologetic, but still eating.

She didn’t even know what it was that she’d already swallowed. It was wriggling desperately in her grasp, and with a start, she realized it was talking, very nearly stumbling over itself to curse her and curse them and tell them all about its vicious other half that would come and sort them out.

Rin paused, swallowed, licked her lips, and asked, in a low, coaxing tone: “is the rest of you this delicious?”

“Rin,” Kakashi said, from his careful, pointedly distant position in the mini-clearing she’d brought down her quarry in, “I really doubt that eating any more of that could possibly be good for you.”

“Hgmf,” was all Rin could say in response, for a moment. “It’d be a shame not to eat the rest, though, right? Rin-Rin doesn’t let good food go to waste.” Which was better than saying she and San were probably going to split apart or fry the whole area if they didn’t have something dense to centre them, to cover for the gaps in their shitty seal. “You don’t have to watch.” And then, in case one of them got so daring as to try to take the ninja-beast-thing from her trembling hands, Rin tore into its wriggling body and ate like she was starving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Cannibalisms:** Zetsu gets literally, but not-too-graphically eaten by Rin. If you've read my other semi-serious Naruto fic, you might notice that I have a habit of having Zetsu eaten. What can I say, it amuses the hell out of me >.>


	8. The year that wouldn't end (4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin trades news with her old friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while, right? I'd like to promise that I'll go back to a regular update schedule, but that's just not gonna happen. Sometimes I'll have a burst of updates every two to three days, and sometimes I'll take a break. Usually I'll say something about it on my blog (which can be found in my profile) if I'm backed up or taking longer than usual with the next chapter of this.
> 
> For this chapter in particular, there's a bit of a cliffhanger at the end. Next one should follow within a couple days, just wait for it~~

### (Rin, **_still_** almost 13 years old)

Rin felt beyond bloated by the time the screams stopped. But her head felt clearer, and the seal didn’t burn as much anymore, as if the thing she’d eaten was lining her stomach now. Protecting both her and San. “Very rich in chakra,” San said, still sounding guilty, and Rin nodded, then straightened up from her awkward crouch and stretched.

(She very carefully did not think about how she didn’t feel heavy, even though she’d eaten something—someone?—that weighed at least as much as she did. She definitely didn’t think about just how she’d managed to open wide enough to swallow down the thing’s arm, or really any of the thing’s pieces, in one go.)

Just behind her, Obito—she knew, without having to look round, just by the weight of his steps—stumbled heavily as he landed on the ground. “You ate it,” he said. “ _Gods._ ” He sounded a breath away from retching, horrified in a truly visceral way she’d half expected to hear from Kakashi. “Rin, how could you—”

“Do you feel more stable?” Kakashi said, cutting off Obito’s half-formed question. Kakashi’s voice came from directly behind her, now, and something about it made her all too certain that if she didn’t answer in a way he liked, she would quite surely be dodging a vicious hail of shuriken soon afterwards. “Your signature’s a bit…”

For answer, Rin shrugged, took a grip on the excess chakra she and San were bleeding off, and pulled it in as tightly as she could. Moments before, she’d only been able to reel it in to settle in an unsteady oval around her, so anything within an arm’s length of her was at risk of being cooked. Now, though, _now_ the oval was down to something like a handspan away from her, and she thought that pushing herself a bit more might mean her finally caging all that chakra beneath her skin, back where it belonged. “How’s that?”

“Hm. Better.” Only now did Kakashi drop down into the mangled clearing created by her fight with the thing, his landing vexingly smooth and silent, his own chakra reeled in tight. “Whatever that was—”

“It was a clone,” Obito spat out, his voice a little too high to be anywhere in the neighbourhood of calm. “You _ate_ his _clone_.”

“Ah? Rin-Rin ate what?”

“I was about to say there might be more of that—creature, around here,” Kakashi said, slowly, “but. A clone? Really?”

“Uhhh…”

When Rin turned toward Obito, she found that he wouldn’t meet her eye. Moments ago, she would have thought he was avoiding looking at her either out of guilt (running away from her, from _them_ , after _three fucking months_ ) or out of the fact that she was still half-naked. Now, though…

Kakashi, his hand on the hilt of his sheathed tanto, looked over in her direction, a question in his gaze. Rin gestured in Obito’s direction with her chin. Kakashi frowned at her; he didn’t mind doing interrogations so much as he minded the fact that she always pushed the active role onto him whenever she could.

“Clothes, clothes,” Rin muttered, turning a little bit away from both boys, her attention sharply fixed on them even as she twisted the ring on her left index finger ring around to get at its storage seal. “I’m sure I have something…”

Even though she felt the shift in Kakashi’s chakra as he unsealed something—being this sensitive was _weird_ —she still flinched when a length of slightly musty linen hit her in the side. “Cover up, Nohara.”

To spite him, Rin rolled up the length and tied it like a breast band, then struck a dramatic pose. “Better?”

Kakashi, glancing at her, didn’t bat an eye. “If that’s how you feel comfortable walking into the village, sure.” He returned his gaze to the fidgeting Obito. “You’ve met someone that makes clones like that? Clones with wood release?”

“Yeah,” Obito said, his gaze roving around them, his eye red and spinning. “That’s why I—he must have been confused, or—you know, you two chased me, and _you_ just, just went for me—”

“Obito,” Rin said, suddenly unable to bear the wait, to continue her carefree act in a bid to get him to relax enough to spill everything, “that wasn’t a clone.”

“It had to be,” was the low, insistent response. “That guy made really solid ones, you know? I never asked how, but… it had to be. I mean, if it wasn’t, I can just forget about going back, right?”

“Going back where?” Kakashi’s voice had gone oddly flat. “The village?”

“No, that, there’s this old guy who—an Uchiha too, isn’t that crazy? He picked me up after—after I, y’know…”

“Uchiha don’t live outside the village,” Kakashi said, his tone still flat. “Is he an exile?”

Rin had never hated Obito’s nervous laughter more than she did right now, half because she could see how tense, how conflicted Obito was, and half because his laughter was different now. Hoarse. “Well, he doesn’t like the clan all that much,” Obito said, grinning. “It’s surprising he bothered to help me, when you think about that.”

Clearly, he had thought about it, and had probably (and prudently) given up on the idea of digging deeper into it. Losing nearly half your body mass did funny things to your willingness to trust the person helping you get over it.

“So Rin ate one of Uchiha-san’s clones?”

“Madara-san. And it was one of his friend’s clones.”

Well, that certainly sounded like a bitter, exiled Uchiha. Who else would name themselves or their kid after the one Uchiha the clan did its level best to pretend had only existed long enough to help found Konoha before disappearing into the ether. As for the identity of Madara-san’s mysterious, Mokuton-wielding friend, all Rin could think of was that Kumo had been trying to steal bloodlines as long as they had been a hidden village, and that it was just Obito’s luck that he’d found out their attempted thefts from Konoha had not all been in vain.

“Where to now, hm?” Rin said, her tone deliberately light. “Rin-Rin won’t go into the village, but Rin-Rin doesn’t mind walking you two all the way there.” That she would be alone after that, on her own again in a world where Kumo had managed to spirit off a motherfucking Senju _and_ an Uchiha exile right under their respective clans’ noses… it bothered her, but not so much that she would walk back into the cage again. “Oh, that’s right, Rin-Rin forgot—you’re on mission, aren’t you, Kaka-kun? So it’ll just be Obi and Rin-Rin on the—”

“I have to go back,” Obito said, in a strangled rush. “I have to.”

None of them thought for a moment that he was talking about going home to the village, to Konoha, to safety.

“No,” was all Kakashi said.

“You don’t mind if Rin-Rin walks you there, right?” was Rin’s approach, her sweet tone carrying a steely undertone. “Just to say goodbye.”

Obito opened his mouth, indignant, but his lack of arguments meant he left it hanging open just like that. Scarred and disfigured and one-eyed as he was—his hood had fallen back sometime during their chase of the supposed clone—he still looked very much himself, very much like the boy she’d grudgingly grown to love. “You can’t…”

“You can’t stop me,” Rin said. “Hurry up and lead the way, okay? We’ll have to hurry if we don’t want to delay Kaka-kun’s mission by too much.”

“He—it’s one thing if you come, but he’s, he’s a _jonin_ , he’s wearing the—”

“I’m sure I have some rope somewhere,” Kakashi said, thoughtfully, his tension clear in the hurried way he’d started searching his pockets. “We can pretend you caught me.”

“But—!”

“Rin-Rin’s your old friend, so Rin-Rin didn’t flatten you while squashing those nasty Kiri nin,” Rin said, nodding to herself. “Then Rin-Rin saw Kaka-kun kill your friend—”

“It was a clone,” Obito said, weakly. “And look, he, his other clone helped me, okay! You really would have flattened me when you, when your, your bijuu went, uh…”

Rin almost felt sorry for him; anyone would have trailed off into silence when pinned by that narrow-eyed glare from Kakashi. “You _knew_?”

“It’s not—! They, they told me—Zetsu’s a spy, okay? With his clones? They told me some Kiri bastards picked up Rin to, to s-seal it in her, and I wanted to try and help her, so Zetsu said he’d wrap me in a clone to help me get here fast enough…”

Kakashi, still glaring, began to unwind the thin, flexible rope he’d just unsealed.

“…I know how it fucking sounds, okay? I’m not, I’m not stupid! I know Madara-san wants to use me, but I can’t—like this, how would I be useful back home? If I stay with the old bastard, I can, if he tries anything really bad against Konoha, I can…”

“He’s not going to get the chance to try anything, Obito,” Rin said, her tone as soothing as she could make it. “Do you think you can manage to hold a henge?”

“I’m not _completely_ broken,” Obito scoffed. “It’s just—Zetsu was—it won’t work. He always, he knew everything, and I couldn’t… Madara’s old, but Zetsu was really…”

“Rin-Rin will make you a promise, okay?” Rin said, even as Kakashi continued to tweak his henge to better match Obito’s current look. “If that was really just his clone, Rin-Rin doesn’t mind dealing with him for you again.”

Obito paled. “We’re going to die,” he muttered. “ _You’re_ going to die! You two… you should just let me go back alone.”

“The day I leave you behind again,” Kakashi said, his calm, clear voice sounding strange coming from what looked like Obito’s mouth, “is the day you’re actually dead.” Then there were two of him, one henged, one not, and even as Obito began to tense, preparing to do something stupid, Kakashi’s clone shunshined behind him and knocked him out with a neat, surgical chop to the back of his head.

Rin sighed. “You _could_ just have paralysed him,” she muttered. “How the hell do we find where they were keeping him now that he can’t even point us in the right direction?”

“You might have been strolling around these last few months, but _I_ wasn’t,” Obito-Kakashi said, taking out a soldier pill and biting into it with a brief grimace. “Once we’re beyond your… your passenger’s splash zone, it shouldn’t be too hard to find his trail.”

It wasn’t just annoying that Kakashi proved to be right. It was _infuriating_ , because it wasn’t even all his effort, but he loped along down Obito and the Zetsu guy’s clone’s trail just as if it was all his doing. As if Guruko and Bisuke hadn’t been the ones to go tentatively sniffing after the few bits of pale white flesh and sluggish blood that had been left of Rin’s unconventional meal, when finding Obito’s trail proved tougher than Kakashi had thought.

(Rin didn’t know what to think about how cowed all the dogs seemed to be around her, now. That they didn’t seem as affected by her chakra as Kakashi and Obito were wasn’t enough to make up for the way the dogs gave her a pointedly wide berth as they worked.)

The trail’s discovery brought on action. Movement, soothing in its repetitive familiarity. Kakashi switched off carrying Obito with his clone three times before Rin forced him to stop so they could frantically dig through their storage seals for something that would help make a stretcher. The wobbly, imbalanced thing they strung together using Rin’s hammock and some hastily cut lengths of wood made her clones grumble under their breath as they strained to carry Obito’s limp body without dropping or dragging him through bushes, but it did the job.

It was nearing morning by the time Obito’s and the clone’s trail petered out near a mountainside. Kakashi, too spooked to try sensing past the bleak rock face for some kind of hidden passage, was the one to call for a halt. “To plan,” he said, but the tight frown on his brows and the restless shifting of his feet against the rocks beneath them gave his anxiety away.

He didn’t want to walk into another cave. Rin, seeing that, felt her heart squeeze painfully, the bitter, angry feeling choking her up so much that she had to cover it by fussing over the injuries of her shadow clones.

 _How does he cover that, when he’s on mission?_ she couldn’t help but think. _Do they even know he has a problem going underground now?_

Ah, thinking like that was no good. She’d been on edge ever since the sealing, but now, now it was a struggle to keep all her chakra in, not to mention San’s. At least, from all Obito had and hadn’t said, there was a nice, strenuous fight in her very near future, a fight where she didn’t have to worry about feeling even a little guilty, afterwards. Kidnappers were scum, after all. Kidnappers that went for kids with kekkei genkai? Doubly so.

“All right,” Kakashi said, going still. “Here’s how we’ll do it…”


	9. The year that wouldn't end (5)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin and Kakashi meet the man that saved Obito.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can probably guess, it's not a happy meeting >.>

### (Rin, STILL almost 13 years old)

Halfway through Kakashi’s low-voiced outline of his plan, Obito woke up. Immediately, there was a furious, whispered argument.

“Madara isn’t—what the hell would make you think he was working with a village? He despises them! It’s just, it’s only ever been him and me and Zetsu, and you, Rin, you _ate him_ —!”

“I thought you said that was a clone,” Rin said, hoping she didn’t sound like she was only pretending to have believed him. “You said he could make solid ones, right?”

“The fact that you haven’t, that Zetsu hasn’t come out to meet you—he always knew when someone was even half a mile within reach of this place!” Obito’s eye was red again, spinning as he surveyed the mountainside. “We’re going to have to lie. It was—it was an accident, you got him the way you got the clone I was in.”

“And you think this Madara-san will believe that?” Kakashi said, his tone making it perfectly clear that _he_ thought that impossible. “We might as well just give up and head back.”

“No,” Obito said. “I, I owe him, okay? We’ll just—we’ll tell him Zetsu’s dead, and then we can, we’ll see what happens, afterwards.” Then, when Kakashi stepped up to the nearest rock face, his hands outstretched: “Not you.”

“Why the hell not?”

“You’re a _jonin_! The vest! He’ll _know_! You can’t—”

“Okay, okay, just Rin-Rin then,” Rin said, with a meaningful glance in Kakashi’s direction. That Obito didn’t seem to notice the worried looks she and Kakashi were exchanging was one thing; Obito had always had moments when he fixated on one thing so much that he forgot everything else. That Obito’s gaze was fixed on the air between them and the rocky, impenetrable seeming mountainside, and that he hadn’t seemed to register the fact that Rin and Kakashi’s clones had just gone full stealth… “Rin-Rin will be careful, okay? Rin-Rin will let you do all the talking.”

It took what felt like half an hour to calm Obito down enough to make him lead the way. By the time he was limping ahead of them, his hands flashing through complex seal sequences before he opened the way for them with silent, careful earth jutsus, Rin had gone quiet inside. Ready.

“You’re walking into a trap,” San said, his voice low and urgent. “The way this friend of yours is behaving… you have to know you can’t trust everything he’s said.”

 _That just means Rin-Rin’s going to have to go all out,_ Rin thought back. Her clones—hm, she’d have to ask them afterwards if they too were able to hear San’s warning—were probably all thinking the same thing, all adjusting the kunai and shuriken she’d distributed among them while cobbling together the stretcher. It was a real pity her rings didn’t fully copy over to them; she was almost sure that the storage ring, if nothing else, could be useful to them. Minato-sensei—Minato-san had been working his way toward stable, shared-access storage spaces like Uzushio were rumoured to have had, ignoring how Kushina-san rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath that you couldn’t believe every crazy thing you heard about what Uzu sealing masters could do.

It hit Rin, then, that right now, she and Kakashi and Obito were walking into the kind of fight that meant they might never see Sensei and Kushina-san again. Or at least, that the boys might never see them again. Rin had always been well aware of what leaving the village would mean for her; she’d made her peace with all the people she’d left behind a long time ago.

She’d taken a little longer to leave her first planned camp in Towari, a mid-sized town a couple days southeast of Konoha. She’d wept as she whispered goodbye over and over and over again, to people she knew would never hear it. She didn’t need to say goodbye now, as the dark tunnel they were ghosting through began to lighten. As the musty smell changed to something more mixed, something that smelt like cooking fires and human sweat and, beneath it, Mama’s hotpot broth again, but stronger.

They all paused, wordlessly. Kakashi’s dogs retreated, stringing out in a line behind them in the tunnel, a nervous, silent relay ending in the tense, tiny form of Pakkun, who was all the way at the entrance they’d deliberately left open.

“Go, Obito,” Rin whispered. “Rin-Rin’s behind you.”

* * *

The fight began with a shock. Rin, immersed in her role as a terrified, doe-eyed, apologetic victim (never mind the bijuu squirming in her belly, that hadn’t been her fault), had only just enough time to take in the huge, dimly lit cavern Obito had led her into, before Obito had drawn her close and put a shaking kunai to her throat.

“What are you doing?” Rin said, her voice high and panicked, her gaze only briefly lighting on the withered, yet ramrod-straight frame of the old man sitting at the foot of the world’s ugliest and largest statue. “Stop it, Obito! Let me go!”

She’d wondered, in the back of her mind, just what kind of person Madara was. If Madara had widened the breaks he found in Obito solely because he too was desperate and afraid, and that was the only way he knew to deal with it. The calm, vari-coloured gaze of the man looking down his nose at her and her friend told her everything she needed to know.

As did Obito’s shaking voice. “My eye already evolved,” he kept saying. “Zetsu was an _accident_. She didn’t mean it. She’s useful, she’ll be useful, she’s a nukenin like us, she’ll understand—”

“Quiet.”

Obito’s hand trembled enough that the kunai left a small nick in the skin of Rin’s neck. The nick healed before Obito could even notice what he’d done, forced along by Rin’s growing rage.

“Tell the Hatake boy to stand down.”

Kakashi and his clone, crouched halfway between them and the low-ceilinged tunnel entrance, went murderously still.

“Tell him to stand down, or—”

The explosion Rin had been waiting for punched the air, shattering the tense silence of the cave. One of her clones barrelled in to snatch up the struggling, panicking Obito; another of her clones ran in to play support. Kakashi and his clone stayed back, sending in wind-coated shuriken, his frustration palpable in each hard throw.

Rin abandoned everything but the thought of getting at Madara’s eyes. She couldn’t see his expression—first rule of fighting an unknown doujutsu was _don’t look into their eyes_ —but she could feel the rage in each of his strikes. That they weren’t hard enough to be a threat didn’t make it any less terrifying that he could land them when she was moving as fast as she knew how.

“You _dare_?” was all he said before things got… weird.

Rin had not been conscious the first time San bulked her up. If she weren’t so angry, so afraid, so desperate, she’d probably have been wishing she were unconscious rather than ordering her clones about in a low, vibrating growl that reverberated through the cavern around them.

“One, carry and shield,” she rasped out. “Two, assist One. Three, assist Rin-Rin!”

There were two more, but she didn’t bother to tell them anything; they would adapt. They were fighting a crazy old man and a groaning statue that _shouldn’t be moving_ , a statue that smelled strongly like medicinal soup and sucked in painful gulps of Rin and San’s chakra when they couldn’t dodge its hits.

Madara, laughing, sneering at her temerity, at their useless resistance, didn’t so much cry out as shriek when one of the more reckless Rin-Rins put a chakra projection through his eye. Maybe both his eyes, she went out gurgling on her own blood before she could dare to take a look.

Two minutes later, Rin and San were panting heavily, one large, scaly hand pressed against their side. The statue had disappeared to gods knew where. Madara was a crumpled, headless corpse, because the second to last remaining Rin clone had taken vindictive joy in popping up right behind him and punching his head into an ugly smear against the floor, and that clone was giggling maniacally as she pulled silly faces down at his corpse.

“Stop that,” Rin—or maybe San—muttered. “Are you sure you don’t see that stupid statue on him anywhere?”

“Rin Four already looked,” the clone whined, but squatted down to begin the search again.

“It was familiar,” San said, his chakra rippling oddly. “That—that wasn’t a statue. I think—”

Everything halted at the sound of Rin Four’s shrill shriek. The hotpot smell intensified to the point that it was sickening, and something black was condensing out of, _growing_ out of Madara’s body. It had its hand around Rin’s clone’s throat, and another hand thrust through her stomach, and it was looking at Rin with the kind of hate reserved for someone that had killed your family.

“You’ll die here, jinchuuriki,” the thing said. “You’ll beg me to let you die.”

“Ah,” Rin said. “You’re the other half, right? Zetsu-kun’s tasty twin?” She was afraid, just a little, but she knew that if she let herself look it, Kakashi would fight his way past her clone to try and help, and she didn’t want him or Obito anywhere near this… this thing. “Come on, then. Come to Rin-Rin’s belly.”

She didn’t know why she thought it wouldn’t taste as good as the other one. Its flesh burned, eating back at her with every swallow, but it was oddly satisfying. Like eating something really spicy.

It was stronger than its unfortunate pasty-skinned fellow, eating her and San’s chakra like it was nothing, but. In the end, it was just some weird plant thing, and San had got pretty good at cycling his chakra through her rings, and that was something that seemed to take the bite out of what they were trying to eat long enough for them to finish it off.

“Did you do that, when we ate the other one?” Rin asked, with a tongue that felt both swollen and leaden. “Rin-Rin didn’t feel it.”

“I think so,” San said. “I only fit in you by cycling some portions of me through your rings, anyway. I’m so glad it worked.”

“Hn,” Rin murmured. “Let’s not eat anything else like that for a while, okay?” And then she flopped down onto the floor and closed her eyes, because the thing she’d eaten had chewed a few too many holes in her, and her body hadn’t the energy to accept proper healing while she was upright.

 _Aren’t you glad I’m a medic-nin, San-nii?_ was the last thing she remembered thinking. _It’s faster to heal stuff when you know exactly how it should happen, right?_

* * *

When she woke up, Obito and Kakashi were arguing again in choked, angry whispers, and she was laid out on something that smelled strongly like Kakashi’s spare bedroll. The dim, distant ceiling of Madara’s cave—no one’s cave now, really—was above her. Bull was pressed gingerly to her side, his tail twitching now and then, brushing against the floor.

“—don’t need an _escort_ ,” Obito was hissing, his newly hoarse, almost lisping voice making it sound far more menacing than he likely meant it to be. “Losing an arm and a leg didn’t turn me into some, some kind of _baby_. If Rin’s been all right on her own on the borders—”

“You can barely run,” Kakashi hissed back. “Your heartbeat is irregular. Your lungs sound fine, but you still wheeze when you’re moving around. You’ll just be a burden—”

“And you won’t? You’re in every bingo book! If you follow us anywhere, you’ll just draw in every crazy bounty hunter we run across!”

“Some dye and a change of clothes will solve my problem. Yours needs at least a month of slow, careful recovery, and—”

“Morning!” Rin said, brightly. Well, as brightly as you could sound when you could feel the ghosts of poorly healed bruising all the way through you, like someone had tried to pound you flat with a really large mallet two days ago. “Is there breakfast? Rin-Rin’s kind of hungry, you know.”

Both boys turned to look at her at exactly the same time, relief relaxing the set of their shoulders, only to be followed by confusion (Obito) and tension (Kakashi).

“You,” Kakashi said, “you’re feeling all right?” His hand didn’t rise up to his vest pockets, which was where he stored senbon and kunai, but Rin could tell by the stillness of his posture how much effort was going into keeping from reaching for a weapon. “Your wounds were—” Horrific, his lack of expression said. “—bad.”

“More importantly, how are you still hungry?” Obito demanded, turning the rest of his lower body as well, to better survey her with his eye. “You ate—”

“Rin-Rin thinks those Zetsu things went into San’s stomach,” Rin lied. She had an inkling that each meal had been shared, but she really, really, _really_ didn’t want to think about it, because that meant thinking of the experience of eating them, and suddenly feeling even more hungry. What would she do if normal food wasn’t—couldn’t— “If you haven’t made anything already, is rice and soup okay? Rin-Rin got her hands on really good quality rice while she was in Grass, just wait until you taste it…”


	10. The year that wouldn't end (6)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin and her friends take some time to recover.

### (Rin, very close to being 13 years old)

That morning, as they ate rice near the entrance of the oversized, soon-to-be-abandoned cave, they all cried.

Rin cried because she’d been holding back tears on seeing Kakashi’s perfectly maintained cooking kit set up before her, and she had a good excuse to burst into tears once she’d had a spoonful or two. It helped that the rice was just that good, fluffy and just chewy enough and so fragrant it felt wrong to eat it in a stuffy, weird-smelling cave.

It tasted like home, except Rin no longer had one, no longer had even an idea of what that would look like for her now. Her Before home had been destroyed by enemies; her Here home had always been a temporary stop. And rice still tasted so good, so _normal_ that even though she’d eaten people-ninja-plant-things, she didn’t see herself ending up with some kind of misbegotten craving for more, one that she had to sate by consuming human flesh.

She wasn’t sure why Kakashi cried. She only noticed it because Obito pointed it out while _he_ was blubbering over his own bowl of rice, and Kakashi glared and blinked viciously hard and turned away from them both in response.

“You’re really here,” Obito had sobbed, as she started the rice. “You’re here making food, and then, then we’ll pack, and we’ll leave, we’re _alive_ …”

They didn’t leave the cave until the end of the next day. Packing didn’t take long; a comprehensive examination of Obito’s condition was another story. As Rin worked, she had to smother the urge to dig up Madara’s useless fucking corpse and reduce it to dust over and over again. The man had left seals everywhere on Obito’s body. Bad ones. Poorly constructed, on the edge of unravelling things more geared toward compelling obedience than keeping Obito in decent health.

And don’t get her started on the horror that was each limb Madara had grafted onto Obito’s body; though (only just) competently attached, they smelled like, no, they probably _were_ bits of Zetsu. Or bits of Zetsu-infused something (someone?) that both turned Rin’s stomach and gave her the infernal urge to try licking Obito’s new, pasty, mottled skin around the join scars.

Naturally she didn’t do anything like that, not just because it would have made the situation even more awkward (Obito was red as a lobster the entire time she examined his attachment points, since it required him to fully undress in front of her), but also because she was worried what it’d do to their group dynamic. Which was already a bit…

Well. First, one of them had ‘died’. Second, another of them had deserted the village entirely on purpose, and the sheer weight of questions and rants on that topic that were being suppressed was already enough to make each of their interactions tense. On top of that, the third of them was blatantly disobeying orders in a bid to reassure himself that neither of his old friends died on their trek to the border of Fire and Wave Country.

Kakashi _said_ he was worried that Obito’s tenuous condition would lead to Obito collapsing on the way out. He _said_ he was hoping one or both of them would see sense and turn around and head for Konoha. He _said_ his mission was wide-ranging patrol, and that he wasn’t so far off his route that he’d be worryingly late when he showed up to the border station he was supposed to check in at. How much of what he said was actually true was an exercise left up to the listener.

It drove Obito mad. Looking at Kakashi’s poorly dyed black hair infuriated him. Listening to Kakashi’s musing on what kind of souvenir to take back for Sensei and Kushina made him grind his teeth. “You’re not supposed to be here,” he ground out, something like every other hour. “Do us both a favour and go back before you get us caught.”

Naturally, Kakashi pretended as if he didn’t hear any of that. The most he would do in response was to fall back a bit in their loose running formation, putting himself just out of Obito’s easiest sight line, and that never lasted for long. The moment Obito stumbled or landed a little hard, Kakashi would run up to him to hover at his elbow, vibrating with the obvious need to offer some condescending but well-meant help.

It was a wonder that they all reached Atsuma, a not-quite-town on the border between Fire and Grass that Rin had chosen for their first stop, in one piece.

“Let Rin-Rin do the talking,” Rin said, firmly, as they approached the inn. Obito was tired enough that his henge would only just pass visual inspection, and Kakashi was so strangely tense that Rin had spread a carefully thin chakra net throughout the town and its outlying fields, tasting all the dim signatures around them just in case. “We won’t stay here long, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need a good cover.”

Rin kept it simple. She hobbled into the inn with greying brown hair and a pinched expression on her face, followed by her two scowling ‘sons’, who were loaded down with two large backpacks and the long-suffering bearing of people at the end of their rope. She haggled with the innkeeper, refusing to budge on their needing _two_ rooms at such-and-such price, and though she ended up needing to trade in a small cannister of green tea to make things work, she hobbled upstairs with her head held high, every movement dripping with satisfaction.

“Can you even afford two rooms?” That was Kakashi, whose considering gaze had been fixed on her ever since the moment she’d transformed into a passable older version of herself and then covered up her cheek tattoos with makeup. “Even if it wouldn’t look proper—”

“I appreciate your opinion, Goya-san,” Rin said, in a firm tone that hinted that she really didn’t, while signing ‘sound seal first, idiot’. “However, much as my clan has fallen on hard times, a few ryo to sleep like human beings after that horrible walk won’t kill us.”

“Ah,” Kakashi said, his left eye twitching. “My apologies, Shio-sama. I overstepped.”

Meanwhile, Obito was painstakingly inking down the standard sound barrier that sensei had taught them all when the war was at its harshest. The first and second seals were already in place, pasted on the north and east walls of this room; the slight tension of half-formed seal space was an unexpected irritant to Rin’s nerves, something she could almost feel on her skin, rather than what it had been before, a skewed feeling she had to meditate to really grasp.

To ease her nerves, Rin fussed over the little amount of unpacking they needed to do. She disparaged the quality of the inn beds. She asked Obito (‘Ryou-kun’) if his leg was paining him. She had to be talked out of going down to demand that the inn send up hot water for the herb bath for his leg.

Then, after they’d moved the show to the second room they’d ordered—Obito under a don’t-see-me genjutsu, Kakashi offering his arm to ‘Shio-sama’ as a support and being categorically refused—they settled in for real. The last two seals went up; Kakashi’s cooking kit made a reappearance, followed by first three, then all eight of his dogs, none of which had been happy about not being able to accompany him on their way into town.

 _I’m going to have to come up with new covers,_ Rin thought, as she watched Kakashi losing his low, whispered argument with Pakkun over whether all his dogs were really required to keep watch tonight. _That, or maybe make sure Pakkun or Akino is a pet for one of us, so they’re not so on edge from not knowing what’s been happening._

Then she remembered that Kakashi wasn’t really going to stay with them, and found herself having to blink away a surge of hot, _stupid_ tears. Thankfully the boys were arguing again (“Of course I can take the first watch! I’m injured, I’m not entirely—”) and neither of them noticed.

* * *

Nothing else of any note happened that night, or indeed, on the morning that followed it. Apart from Obito’s nagging and his still uncertain health, it might have been any of their handful of peaceful missions or breaks between missions, just lacking in Sensei popping in to settle an argument or tell them it was time to pack up and move on.

When it came time to split up, they were two miles off from Atsuma, half out of their flimsy cover identities, and somehow the whole thing ended up being worse than Rin had been expecting. It wasn’t that anyone cried, or that there were heavy words said; after a good night’s sleep in decent beds, they were all in much better control of themselves.

Rin, relying on her brazenly established identity as the baby of the group, wouldn’t let Kakashi go without a good, long, embarrassing hug. Her eyes stung and stung from all the blinking she’d been doing, but at least she had matched the two of them. At least, this time, she’d send Kakashi off like she was her true age, and a woman who had seen enough friends die to be able to shrug off a simple departure.

“Be careful,” Kakashi said, his low, serious tone twisting at her heart. He’d relaxed after a minute in her embrace, though he hadn’t unbent enough to do more than pat her awkwardly on the back. “Don’t take unnecessary risks.”

Rin, for perhaps the first time in her life, bit her lip, swallowed down her retorts, and nodded. She wanted desperately to—to do something, to tell him there was a message seal inked on the bottom of the battered blue side table in her bedroom at home, and that if anything happened, he was to activate it and notify her at once. But Rin had not been so fanciful as to leave behind any such easily exploited hooks into her heart; the seal was there, but it had always only been a pair of the one on her bedroom door. Useless, unless she was there.

If Kakashi died, the first she would know of it was when she saw his bingo book entries begin to be crossed out.

Obito, leaning heavily against the trunk of a nearby, lonely oak, seemed to have only just realized that this was that kind of parting, the permanent kind that people ordinarily did everything to avoid. But much as his chakra roiled with his distress, his expression was calm, almost casual. He even managed a small, slightly stiff smile when Kakashi went over to him to exchange cautious shoulder claps and muttered, half-hearted insults.

“Take care of him,” Rin whispered into Akino’s ear, quietly enough that she thought that only he and the other dogs would hear it. “Annoy him sometimes, okay? You know how he likes to complain.”

As Kakashi’s now mostly familiar form (the dye hadn’t washed off at all) loped off, preceded and trailed by those of his dogs, Rin pretended not to hear Obito’s choked, near-silent sniffles. “Alright,” she said, once Kakashi had crested the low hill to their north, and the sparse forest beyond it had swallowed all hints of him, “we’ll rest for an hour, then pack up camp.”

“Eh? But I thought…” Obito’s voice trailed off as he sent a sudden, understanding look in the direction Kakashi had gone on. “Rin, he _wouldn’t_.”

“Rin-Rin doesn’t think he would either,” Rin said. “It’s only a precaution, you know. Kaka-kun would probably do the same thing, in our place.”

“But—”

“He must’ve noticed I didn’t bother setting up a tent,” Rin said, settling down onto the nearly unfolded rectangle of her spare bedroll. “So if he has to, he’ll definitely say this was where we camped, because he’ll know we won’t have stayed here long. Trust Rin-Rin, okay? It’ll be a bit annoying pushing hard today and tomorrow, but it’s for the best.”

Sighing, Obito limped over to his own bedroll, the ratty spare that they’d all reluctantly agreed was all Kakashi could safely part with. “You could’ve just said it was the plan from the beginning,” he muttered. “You two and all your crazy complicated plans.”

She let go his grumbling half because his sullen tone didn’t have much heart in it, and half because he was sounding a little choked again by the end of that last sentence. Obito was just that way sometimes, the kind of person liable to compensate for his fears and uncertainties with all sorts of loudly voiced complaints. “Wake me up in an hour?” she said. “Lunch made me so sleepy.”

“Probably because you had nearly all the sweet and sour pork,” Obito said, his voice gaining more spirit. “Man, I don’t know what sauce that stall we bought from uses, it was almost as good as how Aunt Keiko used to make…” And then, like he always had, he was off on a tangent, carefully considering just where this new take on one of his favourite dishes ranked among all the rest.

That none of his fondly recalled greats were from the last hellish three or so months didn’t mean that his low, hoarse voice wasn’t as soothing as ever. Slowly, Rin let herself relax, winding down from the last few days of near nonstop tension.

 _I survived,_ she told herself. _I survived, and I got one of them back._ And then she was drifting off to sleep, lulled by Obito’s voice and the slow, steady stir of San’s chakra as it pulsed through her limbs.


	11. The year that wouldn't end (7)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi's departure has unexpected consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that there is a cliffhanger at the end of this chapter. Wait for the next one if you don't want to be abused, ok~

### (Rin, almost 13 years old, still having the longest year ever)

Rin felt better after her nap. That it was only a bit better, and that she felt her heart curl in on itself again upon opening her eyes to see Obito, with no Kakashi lounging nearby and looking down his masked nose at them both… She wasn’t a killjoy. The last thing she wanted to do right then was to give vent to her misery, or do anything else to make things any more difficult than they already were.

Which was, well. After something like four hours of careful backtracking and meandering as they circled back around Atsuma and down the thin, seldom-travelled trade road that would eventually lead to northern Wave Country, any patience Obito had was long gone. Whenever they stopped to catch their breaths (always for his sake), he did what any young teenager his age would do: he whined.

His pack was too heavy. His feet ached. Then, after she’d taken a look at them, painstakingly healing and salving the bruises that were coming up on the foot of his non-transplanted leg, his feet felt weirdly sticky in his shoes. He was hungry. He was bored. He was wondering what the bastard (i.e. Kakashi) was doing.

Rin bore with it for four hours. Then, gritting her teeth, she bore with it for one more hour as they set up camp a little way off from a wide, slow river. Said river was downstream of Kikuyo, a Grass country town Rin had never yet stopped in because it was just big enough that it’d definitely have Kusa nin passing through it; they wouldn’t be smart to drink the river water or fish in it, but a bath wouldn’t be out of the question. Their campsite was dusty and filled with rocks, and the trees in the area were mostly the squat, leafy, stunted things that counted as trees out here in Grass proper, but it wasn’t the worst place they’d ever had to bed down.

And yet, Obito was still complaining. Too many rocks. They’d eaten all the snacks they’d picked up in Atsuma, and hadn’t dared buy stores in that town as if it were a major stop on their route, so it would probably just be plain rice and herbs for dinner again. The riverbank was way too exposed; anyone could walk by and see them bathing, and then what would happen?

“Rin-Rin would kill them,” Rin said, and somehow managed not to add ‘only if Rin-Rin doesn’t kill you first’. Then, when Obito turned to stare at her: “What?”

“You’re joking, right?”

Rin squinted at him. “Maybe a little,” she muttered. Then, when that only made him stare at her even more: “ _What?_ ”

“You’d… if there were someone, someone who shouldn’t have seen us, you’d really…?”

“Kill them?” Rin didn’t know what she felt more strongly right then, annoyed or confused. “What, you’d prefer Rin-Rin left them walking so they could sell us out?”

Obito was still _looking_ at her, though now he seemed to understand that he’d made a mistake. “It’s not, I mean, I wouldn’t let them off either, it’s just that…”

“You’d feel bad?”

“No!” So, yes. “It’s necessary, right? I just…” So he’d thought _she_ would feel bad, having to make that kind of decision. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Probably, that meant Rin needed to do something more normal with her expression. Such as having one. So she carefully put on a frown, and forced herself to continue the familiar motions of rinsing clean the uncooked rice instead of saying the first thing that came to mind.

“Rin-Rin’s never had a problem killing people,” she managed to say, after straining out the water for the second time. She was very glad she had something safe and intricate to do with her and San’s chakra right now. “It’s not like Rin-Rin always wants to, or something—” (half a lie, but close enough to the truth that she didn’t feel bad saying it) “—it’s just, sometimes it has to happen, right?”

“Right, right,” Obito echoed her, from his place before the fire he was expertly nursing. Rin didn’t know how to feel about the fact that she could tell he understood. The fact that he had been made to understand this sort of thing, at his age. “This is good, right?”

“Mm-hm, that’s perfect. Just let me add a bit of salt…”

They didn’t talk about the topic of murder again until much later, when Rin was creeping up the nearest tree to bundle up for her watch, and Obito was tossing and turning and occasionally cursing the rocks beneath his bedroll.

“Rin?” he said, just when she thought he’d finally settled down. “When there’s—when we have to kill someone…”

“I’ll do it,” Rin said, soothingly. She wasn’t saying it just for him, after all; San’s movements within her had been just a little off ever since the subject came up. “I don’t mind it one bit.”

“But—Rin, that wasn’t what I—!”

Thankfully, in the dark, with her perch out of Obito’s line of sight, Rin could roll her eyes all she wanted without having to worry about whether he’d catch it. “Then what did you mean?”

“I’m not stupid, I know that tone, I know you’re rolling your eyes at me like I’m some stupid kid—”

San sighed. Rin couldn’t hold back a rueful, slightly sad grin; apparently, it’d only needed a few days for Kakashi’s gift for condescension to rub off on her.

“—I just, I just think, since it’s us, since we’re going to be nukenin making up our own orders, can we not…? I mean, there’s work that doesn’t mean always having to kill people, right?”

“Just what do you think Rin-Rin’s been doing all this time? Assassinations?” Rin, unable to help herself, dangled from the branch, chakra keeping her hooked safely around the tree limb while she pulled a too-serious face at the scowling Obito. “Jobs like that don’t go to kids like us, you know.”

“Yeah, but, you could henge, right?”

“Ah, but, that sort of thing is so boring.” She’d only tried her hand at it once, a month and a half ago, and the glut of scheming she’d had to do both to get the shitty job and to get herself clear of the fairly competent ninja the lord had hired to clean up loose ends had convinced her it wasn’t something she wanted to bother with. “Troublesome, too, if you do it long enough to get a reputation. Rin-Rin doesn’t know about you, but Rin-Rin doesn’t want to be in bingo books.”

“Yeah, I agree,” Obito said, his nodding motion only faintly visible beneath his blanket in the dark. “It’s really cool, but it’d be so much extra hassle.”

“Rin-Rin thinks, maybe if things are okay in Wave Country, it’d be good to settle there. Do caravan escorts, maybe find a merchant family to sign up with for regular business.”

“Ahhh, but escorts? They’re so boring!”

“At least we’d travel a lot, right? If we play our cards right, we could even pick up a trade or two, or maybe earn enough to start up a storage scroll business…”

* * *

In the end, they had only got a third of the way along to Wave Country when one of the shadow clones Rin had left behind in their fake campsite dismissed itself. “Shit, shit, shit, _shit_ ,” Rin said, as a flood of memories assaulted her, dull at first and then _not_ dull, just frankly terrifying. “We have to turn around.”

“What? Why?”

“Kakashi.” A warning writhe from San within her forced her to slow down, to remember what that ‘we’ meant, even now that Obito’s breathlessness seemed to have been solved by careful, regular exercise. “ANBU from Konoha are after him.”

Obito’s eye flashed red, and his pace increased, and though Rin knew he’d only pay for it later, she couldn’t help but match him. She made three more clones, then ten more, drawing unmercifully on San, even though she’d been trying to avoid leaning on his chakra too much outside of emergencies. She still wanted to believe she’d find a way to get him out on his own, out of the strange space that her rings and the Kiri nin’s faulty seal had made; she’d been trying to live as if it were possible. As if someday all that made up San would no longer be so readily available to her, and she’d have only her own pitiful chakra pool left to use.

“Don’t cry,” San said, his voice high and strangely panicky. “His injuries didn’t look that bad to me. I’m sure he’s still alive.”

 _What if there are more of them?_ Rin raged, inside, because she only had the breath to run right now, her feet hardly seeming to touch the ground at all. _It’s sheer luck those two already didn’t kill him._ It was sheer luck her clones had even managed to save him.

Bored from their monotonous watch, three days into the seven-day span of their task, her clones had started doing a rough, circular sweep of the area, sneaking just close enough to sweep Atsuma or the little hamlet north west of the town. They’d been arguing over whether to widen their patrol range when they’d both sensed a brief, familiar flare of chakra.

One of them had gone to check it out, while the other retreated to the fake campsite just in case. More chakra flares had gone up in the distance; half an hour later, Rin-One had staggered into the clearing with Kakashi bleeding profusely all over her, and all of his dogs in not much better shape.

Rin-One and Rin-Two had poured as much as they could into bandaging and treatment, only to be warned by Pakkun that they couldn’t afford to stay. “ _If she’s near, you need to tell her and Obito to run,_ ” Pakkun had said. “ _Think about how Kiri even knew she’d work as a jinchuuriki. Tell her._ ”

Then, when Rin-Two had refused to stop treatment of Kakashi’s broken arm, Pakkun had set Bull on her, and Bull had been serious enough that Rin-Two had been forced to dissipate rather than hurt him.

Obito didn’t seem all that surprised by the tale when he finally had to slow down enough that she had the breath to whisper it to him. “It’s how they are,” he said, between loud, cough-filled pants. “I mean, you deserted. At best, you’re a liability to the village, so…”

So they, whoever ‘they’ were, had made the decision to expose her to Kiri’s machinations to wring some final use out of her. She’d never made a secret of her sealing prowess, so in their eyes, there’d even been a chance that she’d survive whatever Kiri had planned, survive and be conveniently shaken enough that it’d be easy to pick her back up, and thus obtain another jinchuuriki for the village for not much effort at all.

If Rin had known she’d make a good jinchuuriki—and wasn’t it just _completely unsurprising_ that such information had not been made apparent to her?—she’d certainly have forced herself to tough out her unease and head as far away from Konoha and any other hidden village as possible. But she hadn’t, and so she’d lingered within arm’s reach.

Maybe she was overthinking all this. She’d moved so erratically after leaving Konoha, and she’d been disguised nearly all the time, and it had been months of that, of trekking this way and that on foot, with only minimal use of chakra when she couldn’t avoid it. Her signature wasn’t so distinctive that a sensor could easily pick her out of a crowd; anyone that could was someone skilled enough that it’d be a total waste to have them following around even someone that could be a jinchuuriki for three fucking months—

 _Zetsu,_ Rin suddenly thought, and felt sick. If not for San’s sense of smell, or for the extra reach San gave her in chakra sensing, would she ever have been able to tell when Zetsu, or its brother, or one of its clones, had been lurking near her?

Madara had been an Uchiha, hadn’t he, exile or not. That had to mean something.

“Go on ahead,” Obito said, his voice shaking. “I’ll catch up.”

“If he strains himself, knock him out and carry him,” Rin said, to the four clones she’d designated to stay back with him. Six had already gone ahead, so that left her with three more in reserve, all of which she could send back or send ahead if needed. “Don’t give Rin-Rin that look, Obito. If you want to follow, this is going to be how it is.”

“I’ll never forgive you if you die,” was the low choked answer. “You know that, right?”

“Don’t be silly,” Rin called back, over her shoulder. “Rin-Rin’s not the kind to go down so easily, okay?”

She didn’t wait for his response. She was too afraid that a single wasted moment would mean that this time, she lost a teammate for real.

* * *

She came across an ANBU two and a half hours later, eyeing the few, slight signs of the camp she and Obito had made near the river. Killing them was supremely unsatisfying, because she knew within two moves that she wasn’t skilled enough to afford to try to keep them alive, and it grated at her.

Rin was breathing hard by the time she broke them, and bleeding messily from a glancing blow to her left temple, and angry enough that it was a physical effort to keep San’s chakra safely inside. _I won’t let them off,_ she found herself thinking, as she started the run again. _Any of them._

She didn’t let herself think about why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited on 10/25 because gdi, I keep typing "Water Country" when I really mean "Wave".


	12. The year that wouldn't end (8)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Come in quietly, and your teammate will receive all the care he needs."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took a while to get this chapter where I wanted it. Enjoy :D

### (Rin, almost 13 years old, and very ready for the year to be over)

She nearly missed Kakashi. Wired as she was after that one ANBU kill, pumped full of adrenaline and worry and self-blame ( _what’s the fucking point of clones if they can’t even see an enemy coming?_ ), she forgot to do her ten-minute chakra sweep twice in a row, and only just felt something that could be him after pausing to make up for the sweeps she’d missed.

She turned and headed for that slight, almost negligible sizzle. For all that Kakashi liked to play the cold, untouchable, hyper-professional shinobi, his signature had always sparked for her, white fire in the night of her mind.

That fire was now so dim that everything in her went cold and focused and still. A clone popped, staggering her with memories she shoved aside, memories she barely considered before continuing on.

_Three enemies._

She checked her weapon sheaths. They’d recovered perhaps half of the kunai they’d wasted in the fight against Madara; some had gone astray, some had been lodged in the stone walls (mostly Kakashi’s), and some had just been flattened or pulverized into uselessness (mostly hers). Fourteen kunai were left. Against three ANBU, three ANBU that were probably expecting her, it didn’t seem like enough.

“I can help,” San said, hesitantly, only for Rin to shake her head, hard. _There could be more of them,_ she thought. If she could keep their chakra use low-key, if she was fast enough, she could grab Kakashi and make a run for it before any ANBU support could catch up.

She couldn’t help but think about the odds of any of this happening. One particular fragment of the memory from her clone kept playing in her mind over and over: “Think about how Kiri even knew she’d work as a jinchuuriki,” Pakkun had said, stuttering in his haste to get the words out. “Tell her. Get out of here and tell her!”

“It could be a trap,” San said, but, unlike the last time he’d said it, his tone wasn’t anywhere near as urgent, as panicked. He almost sounded resigned. Then said, when she didn’t respond: “You can’t really think you’ll be able to take down all three of them by yourself.”

“Four,” Rin whispered, flinching as another rush of memories poured into her head. Now she knew why her clones had missed that one ANBU; the one that had just died had interpreted Rin’s wordless order to find Kakashi very specifically. On Rin-Eight’s orders, every other clone had gone full stealth and run around in the world’s most wasteful dragnet, abusing passive sensing until they found the clone that had somehow escaped the teeth of Kakashi’s dogs, and then—

Another clone went out, her neck snapped. _Three and a half enemies; got to be careful of the guy with earth-wrapped fists._ Holding in San’s chakra was getting harder and harder, his anxiety feeding hers, and hers fed by his in turn. It didn’t help that he was probably right, that the ghosts flitting around Kakashi’s signature were _ANBU_ , that even the one she’d taken down on her way here would have been beyond her if he hadn’t been so relaxed, so sure he could poke through her and Obito’s former campsite with no interference.

Thinking, sensing her clones’ increasingly frantic activity, Rin picked up the pace. Grassland flashed by, nearly unseen, her speed and the fading sunlight robbing her of fine detail. Then she was slowing as she tore over the steep hill that had had Obito cursing under his breath all afternoon a day and a half ago, and then she could finally see—

_Oh,_ Rin thought, watching Kakashi disappear from within the circle of her clones and reappear behind one of the masked attackers. _So Sensei taught him._

Her last unfocused thought was: _I really wish I’d learned it too._

Kakashi was staggering back behind the shield of another of her clones by the time Rin was anywhere near enough in range to do something about it. He spotted her.

The way his chakra flinched when he saw her… it hurt.

She knew, then, for sure, that he’d betrayed her. He’d been so tense in Atsuma, so very tense, and when they parted, he’d left so easily. She’d expected it, to some extent, but to have it happen this quickly, to have ANBU on her heels like this, she knew something more had probably gone wrong, something more than her best friend expressing his fundamental disagreement with her defection from their village.

Or at least, she was hoping there was something more. Some reason why things would fall out like this. “What’s this,” Rin called out, slowing down even more, “a party?” She was proud of the way her voice only shook a little, but her entire frame thrummed with tension. This way, they would think she was more scared than she actually was, at least for a few moments. “Kaka-kun didn’t do anything wrong, you know. We met by accident.”

Already, the nearest two ANBU were switching their focus to her, their fingers flicking through unreadable signs as they did so. The ANBU Kakashi had just dodged a blow from was still circling widely around Rin’s bristling clones; the last visible ANBU matched his partner at a slower pace, favouring one leg just enough that it was noticeable.

_Four, then._

“Stop there, Nohara-san,” one of the ANBU called out, just before she got within throwing distance. Then, when she stopped, her forehead wrinkled in exaggerated confusion, they added: “There’s no need to make this difficult. Come in quietly, and your teammate will receive all the care he needs.”

Somehow, that low, steady monotone managed to convey the impression that the speaker didn’t think Kakashi deserved any such care. That it was being offered as a favour, and one that could be quickly withdrawn.

When Rin lowered her head, Kakashi was the only one that tensed. “You must think Rin-Rin’s really stupid,” she said, her voice even more shaky. “What care is he going to need, if you’re going to kill him anyway once you have me?”

“That doesn’t have to happen, Nohara-san,” was the patient, toneless answer. Which meant that ‘that’ had been on the table, and that it most likely still was. “Put down the kunai. We can talk.”

Her clones had tightened their ragged circle around Kakashi. Surely that would be enough to shield him, enough to keep him safely on the fringes of the fight she was about to commit to. “Rin-Rin’s already said what she wanted to say,” she said, her voice mournful, her body tensing for the planned strike. “You just didn’t listen.”

San pulsed in her, eagerly, complaining in the back of her mind when the chakra wave that poured from her only emerged as a bright, attention-grabbing illusion. It bought her a moment to rocket forward, to get herself into range.

Desperation did funny things to her chakra spikes, elongating them way more than she’d expected. One down. Lucky.

The next one took three clones to hold down and stab through, which was really awful because it meant stabbing her spikes through herself, but Rin was too panicked to figure anything else out. She couldn’t _think_ , and that she knew what this was, this push and pull of yin chakra on her senses, it wasn’t helping, she’d never been this deep in a genjutsu before, she hated it _so much_ —

Clarity poured in. Blood dripped down her face. Chakra in it, but she couldn’t, she wasn’t supposed to eat that way, it was another genjutsu _focus_ , “Kai!”

She felt the hand around her throat, the other over her mouth and nose, smothering her, earth chakra cramming up her airways. She bit. Eating non-corporeal chakra was _difficult_ , so she convulsed and her mouth became San’s and they bit through the man’s hand instead, severing his pathways.

Eurgh. Zetsu had tasted way better. Zetsu had probably wished, at the end, just like this guy, that he hadn’t been dumb enough to grapple with her.

“Rin.” Kakashi’s voice was so thin that it immediately ensnared her attention. “She’s dead.”

“Hmm?” There was blood in her mouth, still. Rin spat again and again, generating water chakra in her mouth to try and wash the taste out. And when she finally got the courage to look down at the corpse she was straddling, sure enough, it sort of looked like that of a woman; the armour had a slight, but definite curve. “Ah.” She forced down the urge to spit again. “The dogs?”

“De-summ’d.”

Which was good. And also bad, because Kakashi never did that in a fight he thought he could win. If Rin thought a bit, she thought she remembered one of her dead clones witnessing him doing it, just after said clone had been supposedly made to dismiss itself.

There were only two bodies strewn around them in the grass. Kakashi’s gaze was fixed on her, despairing in a way that was strangely fond. “No,” she said, denying him that unspoken, disgusting goodbye. “You aren’t going to die here.” She remembered the pattern she’d used to use on the front, the jarring cycle that helped shake off genjutsu before they could properly take hold. She was using it now, San’s chakra boiling eagerly through her pathways, and it hurt, and it would have to be enough. “This time, you’d better promise me.”

Something blinked from far behind her, and Rin spun violently, lashing the general area it had come from with jagged chakra spikes. She’d already closed her eyes, thinking of Madara, thinking of the Sharingan that might very well be hidden behind one of her enemies’ masks. “Promise me!”

“Idiot,” Kakashi murmured. His weary voice was jarringly loud. “Shouldn’ have come.” Definitely too loud—sound distortion—another fucking genjutsu. “Sorry.”

That was when Obito came in, with the biggest, brightest, _stupidest_ Katon technique she’d ever seen. A streaky wall of flame roared down the crest of the hill, outlining one crouched form just long enough for Rin to rocket forward and throw. Her wind-tipped kunai only grazed the ANBU, but it was enough. Two of her clones were on him, and then the fire wall was too.

One clone staggered and fell—heart strike. The other dragged the ANBU down, and then the world warped around her, the smells tantalizingly different, the energy in her muscles intensely familiar.

_My sword,_ Rin thought, muzzily, even as she automatically turned towards the next enemy, raising it for a downward cut. _Why does my sword have claws?_

When she froze, her enemy darted backward, terror glazing over his brown eyes. _Weak,_ someone told her. _Finish him—_

The world collapsed, and Rin stumbled along with it. No sword. No armour. No regiment. No friends, because they were all dead.

“Rin,” someone said. “Rin, please. _Please_ let me carry you.” It was her own—not her own voice. Not the old one, but the new one. The woman with the old voice had a name, but she was dead. “Rin-Rin?”

“Mm-hm?” Rin-Rin was what she was. Well, what she used to be; probably what she really was now was something like Rin-Rin-and-San. “What was it?”

Her own, worried face was staring down at her. _Clone_ , her sluggish mind said, after pondering it for a bit. _Safe._ “Let me carry you? Rin-Five has Kaka-kun, and Obito says he can keep up.”

“Hm. Okay.”

Being carried by herself felt nice. She knew just what the pace would be. She was half-comforted, half-amused by the idea of the sight she probably made. She couldn’t help but fall asleep.

* * *

The next time Rin woke, she felt much more herself. She was still so mentally exhausted that she didn’t bother opening her eyes more than once.

Obito? Red-faced and puffing for breath, but alive.

Kakashi? Pale and probably unconscious and smeared all over with blood and dirt, but his chakra was just barely continuing to pulse, and wow, chakra sensing wasn’t supposed to hurt like that.

“Stop it,” Clone Rin hissed at her, so Rin let herself drift off again.

* * *

Properly waking up hurt. Again.

The last time, after Madara, Rin’s body had felt pounded and horribly sore; this time, it was as if her mind had undergone the same aggressive treatment. Yin imbalance, her muddled thoughts suggested. Yin overload, from that last ANBU, who had probably been desperate enough to pour much more energy into their genjutsu than was at all recommended.

She’d had problems with Yin imbalances pretty much since she was born. Mama had taken her to a quiet old woman who drew tiny, vaguely heart-shaped seals on the soles of her feet, and Mama had made her exercise a lot, and had always been strict about how long Rin could spend on poring over books. Part of the reason they’d trained her so early was to help her build up her Yang chakra to balance things out. That part, she’d been grateful for; as for the rest…

“Hey,” Rin murmured, stretching out to poke a finger in Kakashi’s side, ignoring the way it made him stiffen in front of their campfire. “How are Rin-Rin’s parents doing? Still both at the hospital, right?”

The way he looked at her after hearing that question was almost hilariously disbelieving. _That’s what you want to ask me?_ his gaze seemed to say. _**That’s** what you’re dying to know about?_

“Look, Rin-Rin gets that it’s a stupid question, obviously Mama and Papa would be alright, they’re hospital medics. But, you know, it’s not like you could have told Rin-Rin before. Now that you’re a nukenin, though—”

“ _I’m_?” Kakashi tried to surge to his feet, only to be tugged back down by Obito, who was at least thoughtful enough to support him so he landed gently. “That’s—! I’m _not_ —”

“You helped two nukenin kill five village operatives,” Rin said, slowly. She didn’t know why Kakashi was engaging in this really uncharacteristic form of denial, but she doubted she’d be able to talk him through it in a hurry. “How’s your arm doing, by the way?”

“My _arm_? Rin, this isn’t—! Look, it’s, you know how Sensei’s a Hokage candidate, right? It’s, there’s been this pattern he noticed in ANBU casualty rates, and some things to do with their supplies…”

Rin couldn’t help but exchange a worried glance with Obito at that point. That Sensei might become Hokage was one thing; that he’d share details of what, if it was real, sounded like an intensely dangerous political situation with Kakashi was another thing entirely. Kakashi was a jonin, sure, but he was also _twelve_ , and clanless in all the ways that mattered when it came to going up against an enemy that was, according to him, suspected to have worryingly deep ties with one of the haughty elders on the Council.

“I was helping Sensei,” Kakashi was saying, now. “Training with the tracking division—they’re ANBU in all but name, you know—that was my way in, that was how I was supposed to help him get a closer look at the situation…”

_Or_ , Rin thought, wincing inwardly, _it was supposed to keep him busy._ Though, if she thought back to the fights, she did remember that three of the ANBU had worn blank white masks, in contrast to the man with earth chakra fists (eagle mask, maybe?) and the one she’d taken down on her own (another bird mask, she just wasn’t sure which).

That there might exist an even more secret division within ANBU wasn’t a surprise; that Sensei had tried to involve Kakashi in anything to do with such a division _was_ a surprise, one that very easily cemented Rin’s increasing desire to keep Kakashi where she could see him.

“Do you get it, now?” he was saying, his gaze steely with determination, his fists clenching and unclenching. “Even if I have to lie low for now, there’s no way I can just… I have to make sure Sensei knows what’s going on. I have to go back.”

“But— _ow_!” Obito scrambled half off his bedroll, his angry glare fixed on Rin’s last clone, which seemed to have just pinched him. “Why would you—”

“It’s his decision,” Rin said, her tone firm. “The next time we part ways, we’ll just have to be a lot more careful.”

The way Kakashi’s shoulders relaxed made her feel a weird cross between relief and bitter amusement. _It’s too early to put your guard down, you idiot,_ she said to him, mentally. _Do you really think I’ll let you go back to the village just because I said I would?_

Then again, the wary, guilty looks he kept giving her all through their bland dinner said that perhaps he wasn’t trusting her blithe words all that much, but was currently feeling too ashamed of what he’d done to call her on it.

(Apparently, he’d seen someone that looked like the genjutsu-wielding ANBU in Atsuma. The way Obito’s face contorted upon hearing that had been so funny that Rin had found herself hard-pressed to keep up her slight, disappointed frown as Kakashi lied that he hadn’t said anything about it because he hadn’t been sure.)

It was somehow exhilarating to think that this was going to be the way she and Kakashi faced off for real, the first battle between them for high stakes. Kakashi, for all that he was starting the bout hampered by his betrayal and various injuries, wasn’t someone you could count on to fold just like that.

Still, Rin was positive she would win. _He’ll get it soon enough,_ she couldn’t help but think, that night, as she nodded off. _I’ll make him understand why the village is the last place he wants to be._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next will probably be a couple, slightly shorter chapters from Kakashi and Obito's POVs. No promises on when they'll be ready, but I am working on them ;D


	13. Interlude: The end of Konoha's Kakashi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kakashi's defection wasn't decided in a day.

Kakashi would have liked to be able to say he only defected by accident, or that certain circumstances had forced him to it, but. He knew it hadn’t happened that way.

He’d made so many poor decisions, decisions that had seemed inevitable at the time. Decisions that had seemed correct. He’d gone towards the massive chakra bloom he’d felt to his south. He’d kept on going towards it even though he started to smell blood, blood and innards and crushed greenery and something else that he soon learned was the way the Sanbi’s chakra smelled.

(Trust Rin to strike up a friendship with a bijuu, of all things.)

Once he’d seen her, he couldn’t look away. Then Obito was there too, and looking so broken down that it would have been the height of, of not just rudeness, but inhumanity, to do anything other than stick close and try to fix things for him.

The night went on and on and on. Kakashi watched a possible Senju (or, as he thought was more likely at the time, a Kumo nin with stolen Senju techniques) being not just destroyed, but _consumed_ by Rin and her new pet bijuu, and that wasn’t even the weirdest thing that happened.

The weirdest thing that happened that night, or more correctly, in the early hours of the morning after that night, was when Kakashi found himself obscuring the fact that he left behind a clone to dig up and seal away part of the desiccated body of the Uchiha exile they’d killed. Obito had waved off the idea of Kakashi presenting the man’s corpse to the clan. _“No one’ll believe you didn’t steal his eyes and toast his face to cover it up,”_ was the bluntly stated warning. _“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll let someone else dig him up.”_ Kakashi, nodding, had not felt all that much guilt over his plan to selectively interpret Obito’s advice. Sensei hadn’t given him standing orders to try to preserve private evidence stashes in this sort of situation, but Kakashi simply couldn’t help himself, not when it involved Obito and Rin.

He was already betraying them anyway, leaving behind that hidden clone in the exile’s cave to report to whichever ANBU team was closest, all while ‘escorting’ them to the border. He had no idea how being able to whip out and brandish the half-crushed foot of ‘Madara’ in front of T&I would help his friends in the future, but it felt important to Kakashi that he could do so. That he had something real sealed away, some hard evidence that the last few hours had happened.

(He hadn’t let himself admit it at the time, but he’d been afraid, then, that if he insisted on anything to do with the corpse, his friends would catch on to the fact that he wasn’t just following them out of Fire Country to keep an eye on them.)

Even with that snarling pack of worries prowling at the back of his mind, their trip to the border felt curiously like a holiday. Like old times, if Kakashi was careful only to look at Obito’s right side, and to avoid sensing Rin via chakra.

“Be careful,” he told her, when they finally parted. He’d felt a mix of guilt and annoyance and worry and a nameless fear that wouldn’t go away, a fear that clung to him even as he clapped Obito on the shoulder and turned away. _She’ll be fine,_ he’d told himself. _The most any ANBU would do to her right now is follow her, at least until there’s orders for interception._ Orders which wouldn’t be long in coming once either he or his clone reported in, as he’d planned to from the moment he’d seen the ugly pattern on Rin’s stomach, that there was a new jinchuuriki on the world’s stage.

(It was surprisingly hard to tell what had changed from Rin’s fiercely scrunched-in signature, if you didn’t know her as well as he did. In town, Eagle-san hadn’t given either her or Obito so much as a glance, accepting Kakashi’s shaky ‘all clear’ sign without a qualm.)

(At the time, all Kakashi had been able to think of was that it was going to be really unpleasant addressing that obvious misrepresentation of his status when it was time for a formal report.)

Kakashi had taken one last look at Rin and Obito’s sparse, temporary-looking campsite, and even as he sighed inwardly over the sloppy way they’d laid out their things, he’d also found himself thinking he wished luck to whatever ANBU team was assigned to trailing his friends. Rin wasn’t the hardest target to track, but she was creative, sly and shameless, a bad combination for anyone who wanted to pin her down. Obito would hinder her for the two minutes it took her to browbeat him into allowing her or her clone to carry him during the fast stretches; outside of that, though…

Worrying wordlessly, Kakashi had left, heading towards a border station with all speed, his thoughts unfocused as he debated the wisdom of everything he’d done up till then. The fact that the clone he’d left there hadn’t yet dispersed itself had loomed large in his mind. The fact that he probably wouldn’t be able to watch what happened when Rin and Obito were finally cornered had been maddening.

“They’re sensible,” Kakashi had muttered, slowing down a touch so he could be heard. “They’ll be sensible even in that situation, right?”

“Right, boss,” Akino had said, his soothing tone already showing signs of strain. It’d been the third time Kakashi had asked that, so it wasn’t unexpected.

The really unexpected thing was when Kakashi took out his canteen and pulled down his mask, only to feel the sickening sensation of a knife sawing hard across his throat. He’d doubled over in place, barely managing to hold on to the canteen, and even as his shadow clone’s memories trickled through his head, he hadn’t been able to understand what had happened.

He’d—the clone had been in the midst of reporting in.

“Boss?”

The clone had been on edge, tired and dusty from digging up and then re-filling the grave, and from wandering around sniffing for clues and kunai. It had been all too aware of the small stasis scroll distorting its front left pocket. It’d recognized one of the ANBU that had approached it. It’d started a report.

It’d been coy, dragging the preliminaries out, trying to memorize the signatures of the ones with blank masks. It’d said something about how Kakashi had only let himself catch up to Rin (just Rin at first, to shore up his careful act as someone too overwhelmed to think clearly) _after_ she’d fought someone in the cave. And then, just as the clone was trying to read its listeners’ reactions—

“ _Boss!_ ” That was Urushi, his voice rough with panic as he pressed close to Kakashi’s side. “What the hell is going on?”

“I don’t know,” Kakashi had said. He remembered how weak he’d felt, how he’d found himself using Bull’s broad back to steady himself. “I don’t…” _They knew I’d be on patrol in the area,_ he’d thought. _They weren’t surprised to see me._

But it had been more than that. The ANBU had barely paid attention to his clone’s excitement, his clone’s rambling about how he’d found Rin (true) in that very spot (not true). They’d barely paid attention, not just because they were in a hurry, but also because they seemed to think Kakashi would have nothing new to tell them, which didn’t make sense unless they’d already known the scattered story his clone was trying to tell.

Obito had known about Rin, too, Obito and his asshole saviour of an Uchiha. But Kakashi had taken that differently, had just thought that maybe ‘Madara’ had Kiri connections. That the man had passed on the news to Obito to try to see if just hearing about it could squeeze an eye evolution out of him.

_That fucker,_ Kakashi had thought, as he coughed. As he screwed the cap back onto the canteen that Guruko had nudged back into his nerveless hands. _How did he know about Rin? How would he know they’d take her, if—_

“Boss?” Pakkun’s voice had been dead serious. “What happened?”

“ANBU killed the clone I left at the cave,” Kakashi remembered saying. “I don’t know why.”

Which had been a lie. He’d known why, even as he said it, and from the sidelong looks his dogs had started exchanging then, they’d already begun to guess at the murky reasons that laid behind the situation, and their guesses weren’t at all far off from his own.

There had been too many coincidences. That Rin was the one Kiri had picked up. That Rin had happened to survive her unwilling sealing. That Rin had been captured—processed—assaulted—right in the middle of Fire Country, a little way off from Madara-san’s musty cave, Madara, the _exiled_ Uchiha, who had somehow picked up another Uchiha during the war, one that everyone thought dead…

“We have to warn her,” Kakashi muttered. Without that, Rin would hesitate if she— _when_ she came across an ANBU from Konoha. She’d expect, like he would in her place, that they were coming after her in good faith. Seeking to probe into what had happened, or to open negotiations, rather than seeking to pick up the weapon they’d deliberately allowed to be made. “Something’s wrong with all of this.”

Shiba and Uhei exchanged meaningful looks. Pakkun, again, had been the one to ask the obvious question. “Minato-sensei?”

“Yes,” Kakashi said, impatiently. “After.” He hadn’t even felt guilty at the time; after all, it wasn’t like he’d been sure he’d be able to make the Konoha run unmolested within a day or three. Beelining back to Atsuma to warn Rin, or perhaps warn one of the clones she’d likely have left in the area, that was something he thought he could get away with before going utterly to ground. Before putting his all into sneaking back into Konoha to make Sensei aware that someone was deliberately flouting orders in a way that could lead to another war.

Naturally he didn’t end up getting to Atsuma unmolested. He’d run into the unsmiling woman he knew only as ANBU Eagle not an hour and a half before even seeing the edge of the town’s rice fields, and then after that, things had got a little hazy.

He wasn’t surprised that Rin had refused to take his advice and run. He _was_ surprised at the way she looked at him before she started slinging her weight around—like she was so deeply disappointed that she couldn’t even hide it for a second.

After that long, ugly fight, Kakashi’s bad decisions just kept on piling up. He’d let one of Rin’s clones pick him up, rather than leaving him in the dirt as he deserved. He’d failed to remind Obito to seal up any of the bodies, or even just the masks. He’d continued staying with the two of them, even after his arm healed, and after Rin stopped staggering around whenever her clone let her down to walk.

He’d had so many excuses. His arm. Rin. Obito. His dogs, who had flatly refused to entertain the idea of his turning around to start the necessary journey back home two weeks after the fight, long enough that even if things were stirred up in the village, Kakashi would still be able to rely on his knowledge of how to slip through the main patrol routes.

“Let’s say it works,” Bisuke had said, his voice on the edge of a growl, his shoulders rolling as he stalked around on Kakashi’s left. “Let’s say we _can_ get back in with no problems. What if we get there, and Minato-sensei is dead?”

“There’s no way that—”

“Okay, fine, not dead,” Akino had rushed to say, ignoring Bisuke’s full-throated snarl at him. “How about disgraced?” Then, as Kakashi eyed him: “It’s not that much of a stretch; all three of his team members defected.”

“What the hell do you mean, ‘all three’? Obito _died_!”

“Officially, he was listed as missing in action,” Pakkun had said, his voice deceptively even. “No body was ever recovered. You think whoever is framing Sensei won’t bring that up?”

They definitely would. Kakashi, courtesy of his having neglected to report Rin’s bizarre pre-defection behaviour until hours after the report would have been actually useful, had gotten to know just how the minds of T&I’s finest worked. Hirai-san, the woman that had been his main interviewer had had him half-convinced _he_ had suspected something, suspected what Rin might try to do, months before it actually happened, only for said Hirai-san to stop and purse her mouth and mutter under her breath about how it really just didn’t fit, after all.

And the worst thing was, Obito wasn’t really dead. He _had_ defected. They’d traded him to Madara, or they’d decided to ignore his continued existence on Madara’s behalf, so it really was all three of Sensei’s students that could be said to have defected. Even though Kakashi was doing his best to keep it to two.

And there was the fact that, traitor or not, Kakashi hadn’t thought for one moment that he’d let any of their ANBU pursuers go. He’d thought, back then, that he was going to die, but he wasn’t going to die first, or die alone, because if not—

He hadn’t killed those blank-masked ANBU for Sensei, or for the Hokage, for the village. He’d slashed at them, hacked at them, feinted around them, for Obito and Rin.

The final nail in the coffin came when Kakashi had been not-a-nukenin for just over a couple months. Asking around for the most recent news in the bounty hall in Fuchuu had turned into paying a hundred ryo to look through the bingo books that had just been delivered, and _that_ had turned into a brief, awkward silence when they thumbed through to Kakashi’s page number in Iwa’s book, only to find him marked deceased.

“It’s a mistake,” Rin had said, soothingly. Then, once they’d checked the other bingo books and found out that it most definitely wasn’t: “It’s not something that can’t be fixed, you know. You can explain when you go back.”

_And then what?_ It had been three and a half months by then, which was more than long enough for Kakashi to think up several terribly plausible theories for what might be happening back in Konoha. The most hopeful one had Sensei prevailing, Sensei victorious, but having had to compromise by declaring Kakashi prematurely dead, and using the tragedy of his now completely destroyed genin team to great effect.

Talking through that hopeful theory with his dogs generally ended in him privately imagining returning to the village bloodied and alone, mysteriously triumphant. _“They thought they killed me, but it was only my clone.”_ _“What happened to the ANBU team after that? It was them or us, Sensei.”_

Rin, of course, would not return with him. Her only concession to the village would be restoring Kakashi to full health. He would say it had taken this long for her to finish because the rogue ANBU team had nearly killed him. Obito might talk about returning just to rub it in the faces of his clan that even after late activation and losing one of his precious eyes, his remaining one had evolved far beyond all their petty expectations, but in the end, he’d stay with Rin.

(Even in his most generous dreams, Kakashi couldn’t imagine Obito choosing duty to the village over life with Rin. It would have been infuriating and depressing if he wasn’t so keenly aware that the life she was determined to live was very much on offer to him, too.)

Kakashi didn’t say anything while they were in the bounty hall. He didn’t say anything as they set up camp that night, or as they broke it up the next morning. He said nothing for two more days, not even speaking to his dogs.

Then, on the fourth day after receiving the news of his so-called death: “No. Not another fucking escort to Osato.”

Rin had turned around mid-word, her mouth gaping unattractively. Obito had blinked hard, his mouth not falling open only because he was mid-chew, and his manners while he ate had always been freakishly good.

“I’m not saying to give up on them permanently,” Kakashi had found himself saying. “It’s just. The route sucks. The only good thing is that it’s short, and even _that’s_ bad, because it’s still three days of bug bites and dragging those fucking wagons out of the mud every time they get stuck, while the client screams and cries and whines at every slightest thing. Pick literally anything else, because I’m not fucking doing it this week.”

“O-okay,” Obito had said, and, just like that, Kakashi’s ninja career was over. He still imagined going back sometimes, still imagined returning from the dead, but he’d known then that he was only going to keep imagining it. “Where do we go, then?”

“Ohashi,” Kakashi had said, and then weathered Rin’s frowns and sceptical murmurs to explain in detail why he thought a trip that far north would be worth the risk. She didn’t agree, of course—Ohashi was, though not in Lightning Country, _was_ on one of the main routes trade caravans took to shuttle between Lightning and Hot Water—but Kakashi’s forceful representations had her thinking more about their overall strategy as nukenin, and that was all he’d wanted.

* * *

Three months after that, when they heard that Konoha had raised up the Yellow Flash as their Yondaime Hokage, Kakashi finally felt like he could relax, could let go of the unspoken worry that his ‘death’ had been for nothing. That Rin didn’t tease him in any way for a whole week, and even went so far as bullying Obito into making his favourite broiled fish three days in a row, was just icing on the cake.

“Does he _look_ depressed to you?” Obito finally exploded. “I’ve had it! It’s pork tonight, okay, spicy braised pork, and if that makes him run back to resurrect himself in the village, so be it!!”

Obito, like he always did after venting so dramatically, had apologized that night, his voice low and reluctant as he dithered by the side of Kakashi’s bedroll. And then added, in a low, whispered rush: “If you really want to go back, I can, you know I can help you out, right? With me, it’d be so easy getting past all the patrols…”

An hour later, when Obito’s chakra had gone slack, and he could thus be taken as safely asleep on the other side of camp, Kakashi turned over in his bedroll, making a deliberate, over-loud production of it. He was not at all surprised that, when he finally settled down facing in Rin’s sleeping bag’s direction, she was awake, and her slit-pupilled gaze was ominously narrow.

“I wouldn’t have taken his help,” Kakashi said, his voice low and even. He was positive that all his dogs were listening in, despite the way Bull was drooling at his feet, and Akino was snuffling in his ‘sleep’. “It’d be worthless to go back if I couldn’t do it on my own.”

Rin’s eyelids lowered. “It’s good that you know,” she murmured, just as he’d expected, the softness of her voice only managing to blunt the impact of the threat she was implying. “If you do decide to go, don’t come back.”

She said that last, damning sentence so calmly that it took Kakashi a moment to process what it meant.

Then, while he was struggling not to sit up and hiss at her about how cruel it was to bring that out at this juncture, to say those words to him and _mean them_ , she added: “Rin-Rin can only let you go peacefully one more time.”

Hearing that, Kakashi couldn’t help but bite the inside of his lip. Then, when that didn’t calm him down, he turned over again on his bedroll, violence in every line of him. Every sound Rin made after that dug into him, her every rustle and footstep seeming painfully loud, her slight huff of effort as she picked up her sleeping bag and brought it close—too close— “You’re keeping watch on me, now?”

“If you don’t like it, leave.”

“You—!”

“It’s still your decision, but you know, Rin-Rin never said anything about making it easy for you.” She was a little breathless now, after struggling back into her sleeping bag. There was a familiar, barely suppressed glee in her voice, a syrupy self-satisfaction that made Kakashi want to turn over and try to strangle her. “Just give up, okay? Hurry up and admit it’s your loss.”

Kakashi, scowling, pressed his head flat against the lumpy material of the bedroll. His eyes were stinging. There was something off about the fact that none of his dogs had spoken up or growled yet, the way they sometimes did when his arguments with Rin were much less serious, but even that niggling thought couldn’t last in the storm within his mind.

_Even after what I did,_ he couldn’t help but think, _she still wants me here this much._ Obito was a given, not just because Obito was the kind to yell and dish out punches when he was upset, and then shrug it all off like it was nothing, but because the bite had long since gone out of the names Obito called him. Rin, on the other hand, had just gone on as if nothing had really happened, courteous and careful of his moods to the point that it made him feel even more guilty, even more determined never to bring anything up out loud, just in case.

Now, despite the fact he was monitoring her position and her chakra closely enough to sense just when she reached out, he still had to struggle not to flinch when he felt the cool weight of her hand on his shoulder. “If you haven’t given up, whenever you run, don’t even think about doing it halfway. Whoever you end up with, you’d best be prepared for them to become Rin-Rin’s greatest enemy.”

It was as if she knew, somehow, without even having to ask, about the idle, useless thoughts he’d had about the kind of circumstances it would take to make his return to Konoha welcome. Returning there with stale evidence and needless testimony was one thing; returning there with that and a jinchuuriki was another.

“I don’t know why the hell you’re even saying all this,” Kakashi gritted out. “Didn’t I say I wasn’t going?”

“Rin-Rin only heard you wouldn’t let Obito help.” Which was all the more galling to hear because it was true.

“Fine! I’m not going! Fuck!”

“Hmm.” He could almost feel the intensity of her smug, stupid smile as she pulled her hand away from him. “Okay, then.”

Scowling, Kakashi curled his hands into fists, more than prepared to brood all night and wake up in a justifiably bad mood. But then he felt Rin’s chakra settle, and felt his dogs shift closer, silently supporting him, and a wave of sudden, unlooked-for relief thundered through him, frightening in its intensity.

_It’d be detrimental to the village if I went back now,_ he thought. _My presence there isn’t worth making an enemy of the Sanbi’s container. Sensei would understand._

Just like that, he fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so ends the second arc (～￣▽￣)～
> 
> Next, a time skip at least a year or so ahead, and the start of the third arc, which is of course all about love. And fear, and how to make it as a nukenin, and so forth. Due to upcoming underage scenes, I'll be skipping posting on meme and just posting chapters here directly when they're done.


	14. Outtakes (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group needed a name, and Obito came through. Also, Kakashi's dogs have a much-needed chat with Rin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've changed what the 'next chapter' is going to be like three times now. This is the last time I promise!!! Orz
> 
> These outtakes are in no particular temporal order.

### the origin of the disgusting group name

“The Demon Group?” Kakashi said, unable to help himself. “Really?”

“Yeah, it’s sort of…” Obito screwed up his nose, leaning heavily against the surprisingly sturdy desk of the impatient-looking bounty clerk. “I mean, it’s just three of us, so calling ourselves a group feels like bragging. And it’s also really lacking, you know, _something_.”

“Lacking what,” Kakashi said, “basic common sense?”

“No, it’s like, lots of people in the business get called demons, you know? We need something extra to stand out.”

“No.”

“Oh, oh, how about, y’know, something to describe where we’re from?” And then Obito turned towards the clerk, blatantly ignoring Kakashi’s glare. “How about something like the Abyssal Demon Group?”

The fact that the clerk didn’t immediately write that down was a point in her favour; the fact that she then looked to the smiling face of Rin as the final arbiter in this decision was decidedly a point against her. “There’s five more people in the line behind you,” she said, bluntly. “Abyssal Demon Group, Heaven Demon Group or I don’t know, Dumpling Demon Group, whatever it is, please just say it so we can settle this.”

“Hmm,” Rin said, pursing her mouth. “Then, then, Abyssal Demon Group is fine.”

“Yosh! Alright!”

Kakashi sighed.

“Your names, then, in order of seniority.”

“I’m the Water Demon,” Rin said. “Gin-chan’s the uh, the Speed Demon, and Kurochin’s the Shadow Demon. Okay?”

“Hey, I’m glad to be the Shadow Demon and everything, but just why the hell am I the least senior?” Much as Obito sounded like he was complaining, his one eye was greedily fixed on the words the clerk was carefully inking down on their application. “Wait, clerk onee-san, can’t you use the character for kage instead?”

“I’ve already written it down. Base of operations?”

“Kitagawa, please.”

“The commission rate’s lower if you’re based here in Ichinohe, just so you know.”

“Ah? Then here’s good.”

“Alright, Ao-san, please make your mark here, here and here. This is your provisional badge; you can start accepting jobs right away, but the commission on anything you complete before your application is accepted will be charged at the same rate non-affiliated bounty hunters get. Any questions?”

“How long does the application process usually take?”

“Usually it’s about a week, but considering how slow it is right now, it’ll be three days.”

“Thank you very much.” Then, as they all sauntered out of the clerk’s office, Rin turned to give Kakashi a measuring look, and said: “It’s just for now, okay? You have to admit, something as stylized and flashy as what we chose will be easier to leave behind when we need to.”

Naturally, they never ended up needing to.

* * *

### the ninken’s secret conspiracy

A week after the bloody clash with the ANBU, Rin was midway through setting up traps for game to the far north of camp when one of her current shadows finally decided to speak up. “Nohara.”

“Mm?”

Rin had always had a hard time telling Kakashi’s dogs apart just from hearing them; apart from Bisuke, whose voice had a nasal whine to it when he wasn’t trying to sound tough, everyone other than Pakkun (whose voice was deepest) and Akino (who used the most slang) tended to blend in with each other. Thankfully, just as Rin was considering asking who it was that had called out to her, Shiba crept forward out of the undergrowth, his mohawk a handy signboard for his identity. “We need to talk about what you can do for Boss without permanently rejoining the village.”

Oh. So it was that kind of conversation. “We can talk on the flat stone northeast of camp,” Rin murmured. “Rin-Rin will be done here in a minute.”

Ten minutes later, as Rin sat down on the smooth, sun-warmed surface of the stone, she wasn’t all that surprised that Shiba and Pakkun weren’t the only ones sitting across from her. Bull was there too, his massive form stretched out on the stone behind the primly upright forms of Shiba, Pakkun, Guruko and Uhei.

“Isn’t he going to suspect something, seeing you all missing?” Rin couldn’t help but ask, only to receive a series of shrugs. “I mean, if it was Rin-Rin—”

“He’s doing those hand exercises,” Uhei interjected. “You know how he doesn’t like being watched during rehab.”

“Okay, fair point. What do you guys have to offer Rin-Rin?”

For a moment, there was a beat of uncomfortable silence. “Offer?” Pakkun said, disapproval making his voice even deeper than usual. “Nohara-san, it’s not that I want to start this off on a sour note, but just what do you think would have happened if Boss hadn’t come back to warn you?”

“Your boss betrayed me. That warning barely made things even.”

“He did his duty as a shinobi of Konoha.”

“A true Konohan shinobi would have tried to take Rin-Rin in from the start. Try again.”

Pakkun, no fool, narrowed his eyes up at her. Then, after a hearty cough, he continued the conversation as if he hadn’t just attempted to have it both ways, blaming her for Kakashi’s tarnished honour as a ninja and as a friend. “Boss has a week and a half before he’ll get marked down as missing. With you by his side—”

“Nope.”

“ _Temporarily_ , Nohara. Even without the Sanbi behind you, Konoha wasn’t your cage. Your presence would be enough; you’d keep him safe just by standing beside him for a few days.” Pakkun lowered his head. “You know he would never ask. So we are. All we ask is for a handful of days.”

Rin’s mouth thinned. “You don’t see any contradiction in that, huh, that the Rin-Rin you want as his protector’s the same Rin-Rin that would have died if he hadn’t warned her?”

“That’s not really—”

“It isn’t? Okay, let’s say it isn’t, let’s say Rin-Rin’ll be enough to keep someone from chopping off all your heads on the way back. What about Obito?”

Silence spread around her again, broken only by awkward shifting and rapidly exchanged looks between the dogs. “That,” Uhei said, weakly, “if you leave a shadow clone or two with him, there’ll be no need to worry.”

“And you think Obito will just accept that?” Rin said, raising her eyebrows. “How much do you want to bet that he drugs or mesmerises my clones and follows in our footsteps?”

“Clones don’t need to eat,” Shiba pointed out. “And as for the other thing, I really don’t think he’d—”

“Come on, Shiba, you know what he’s like,” Pakkun said, bitterly. “He’s an Uchiha. When there’s something they want, none of them have any kind of bottom line to speak of.”

“Eh?” Rin couldn’t help but say. That sounded very much like the result of hidden grievances, grievances that had come about because of some interaction she’d missed between Kakashi and Obito back in the day. “Obito’s never really struck me as that kind of person.”

“Then why the hell do you think he’d drown your clones in genjutsu so he could ignore your orders and follow you?” Pakkun’s tone was about as indignant as it could get without being loud, and he seemed one more provocation away from pacing angrily back and forth in front of her. “He’s exactly that kind of person. _Exactly_.”

“I don’t think he’d do that sort of thing just because he wanted to follow us,” Rin said, frowning a little. “He’d only—he’d just be worried, you know? Worried and wanting to help.”

“Wanting to _help_ ,” Pakkun spat. “Because of that little bastard’s helpful little sacrifice, Boss would only eat twice a day because we reminded him. Because of _you_ , he practically lived in T&I’s interrogation rooms for a month! Why did I think this was a good idea?”

“I’ll give you that month in T&I, but don’t you even dare say anything about what Obito did,” Rin said, coldly. “A minute more, and I’d have had to bury two friends, instead of just worrying for one.”

“So _now_ you admit your running away didn’t do Boss any good? Why do I feel like that hasn’t changed your mind about escorting him back, I wonder?”

“Because that village is a fucking pit, and you know it!” Rin boiled with the urge to rise to her feet and stomp around on the stone like Pakkun had been doing a minute ago; the only thing that stopped her was the fact that she knew it’d only make her look like she was trying to tower over the dogs. That she wanted to, both to vent and to help them come to see things her way, well, that was neither here nor there. “How long do you think he can live on back there, even if everything goes right when I escort him back? Do you think he’ll live to be twenty?”

“With Sensei there—”

“What am I doing saying twenty, shouldn’t I be asking if he’ll even see his fifteenth birthday?”

“Saying it like that, aren’t you looking down on our skills, Nohara-san?” Guruko’s voice was rough with affront, his shoulders stiff with offended pride. “We didn’t fail a mission until we ran into you a week ago. Boss was doing just fine.”

“What about after you go back, after he strolls into the village with a known defector?”

“Defector my ass,” Shiba growled. “You know just as well as we do that your status as jinchuuriki will override that easily. And if you stayed…”

Rin squashed the urge to scream that the point was that she _wouldn’t_ stay, not in a village that had so recently betrayed her, and that had been indifferent to her welfare practically since the moment she was born. Instead, she simply tilted her head to one side and shook it slowly. “Nothing can make me go back there,” she said, as an opener. “Not even him.” Then, while the dogs either glared at her or frowned down at the rock they were all sitting on, she went for the money shot: “His father was even more skilled, and still…”

Another chill silence descended around them, settling like a heavy weight. It was several breaths before anyone spoke.

“That won’t happen,” Pakkun growled. “Boss wouldn’t ever—that you’d even bring that up—”

“I’m sorry,” Rin said, immediately. She wasn’t, but it was best to say she was, to sound like she meant it. “I shouldn’t have brought it up, it’s just…”

“This conversation is going nowhere,” Shiba snapped. “Apologies for wasting your time, Nohara-san, but we’ve been away from Boss long enough.” And then he was clambering back to his feet, his stiff-legged gait and bristling stance echoed by most of the others, all except for Bull, who only ever bothered bristling at true enemies, and Pakkun, who stalked off with his nose held primly in the air, not deigning to waste energy on any further posturing for her sake.

“Ah,” San said to her, his voice quiet in her head, his tone dismayed. “That could have gone better.”

_Them leaving angry is fine, so long as they think about what I said,_ Rin thought back, hunching over in place, scrubbing the heel of her sandal against the stone. _If he was really that broken up over Obito’s death, or upset by what happened after I defected, they’ll be idiots not to take it into account, and think about how he’ll react to the shit everyone in the village will try to pour on him if he goes back._ More importantly, they needed to understand she wasn’t willing to be his trump card, not if it meant going back to bow her head to the same Hokage that had been perfectly willing to trade her life for advantages when she was only five years old. _They’ll see things my way when they think it all through. It’ll be fine._

Still, Rin couldn’t make herself budge from the rock for another quarter hour, and when she did go back to camp, she couldn’t bring herself to make much in the way of her usual frivolous conversation.

* * *

A week later, just as Rin was seriously starting to contemplate the merits of forcibly banishing the ninken and tying up Kakashi so that he physically couldn’t leave, they all stumbled on news of Kiri’s new, acrimonious dispute with Konoha.

“No one’s really saying what started it,” one merchant was saying, loud enough that everyone in the inn could hear it. “It’s serious, though; anyone that so much as set foot in Fire Country is getting their manifests and itinerary and everything else gone over with a fine-toothed comb when they reach Taragi.”

“Gods be merciful,” another merchant murmured in response. “It’s not everyone, is it? Surely it’s only those who want to move on into Water Country that are getting the full treatment…?”

The first merchant shook his head. “Everyone with a Fire Country stop gets it, no exceptions.”

The response to that ominous proclamation was widespread and rife with fear. The fact that these sorts of petty indignities were the kind of thing everyone had had to endure before this most recent war kicked into high gear only intensified the general reaction.

“Konoha will retaliate, won’t they?” “Anyone here have news from Fire? Anyone?” “Maki-sama’s caravan goes as far east as Tanzaku, and he’s due back in these parts in a few days. We’ll know then.” “Wish I’d known Taragi wouldn’t be worth it this trip.” “What do we do with the dried goods, Nishi-san? Half our cargo is—”

“There’s no point in listening more,” Obito murmured. “The way I hear it, no one’s got any details worth talking about, and it wasn’t like we were planning to work in Water Country anyway. Shouldn’t we head up to bed?”

“Mm,” was all Kakashi said, so Rin dutifully stood up, only lingering behind for a moment to settle the bill. And, of course, to give the worried, scowling Uhei and Shiba a pointed look, one that Shiba wrinkled his lip at her for, while Uhei avoided meeting her gaze.

“Going to talk to them again?” San asked, as she counted out ryo and left the small handful of notes in the midst of their emptied plates. “Tonight would be a good time.”

_No need,_ Rin thought back. _They already know the stakes have gone up._ If Konoha struck back at Kiri, even if the state of affairs between both hidden villages didn’t descend into outright war once again, there would still be tension in Konoha, the same kind of choking fear and anxiety that had held sway back when Hatake Sakumo had made his career-ruining blunder and paid with his life.

Kakashi’s circumstances were different, but not _that_ different. Even if Sensei’s influence was enough to shield him, there was the matter of the ANBU he’d worked alongside a traitor to kill. If Sensei was able to cover that kind of thing up, Rin couldn’t understand how he would have allowed that kind of situation to come about in the first place.

In any case, Rin was dead set against returning to Konoha now. In peacetime, there was a slight chance that she could do so temporarily to aid Kakashi, and be somewhat assured that they’d let her leave afterwards, or that they wouldn’t pursue her all that hard. In wartime, though? Not a chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next, a two-parter from Obito's hapless POV. Please look forward to it~~


	15. Interlude: Obito, team pervert (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obito comes to terms with an unwelcome change in his role on the team.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle reminder of the underage warning on the story. Also added dubcon tag because it will prove necessary.
> 
> Originally, I was going to speed straight from Kakashi's bit into the next arc with a chapter from Rin's POV, but then I ran into roadblock after roadblock there. Then I dug up a half-finished snippet from Obito's POV and couldn't stop writing, so here you go ;D

Obito really, really, _really_ didn’t like being the responsible one. He’d had to be, at home, because after Saya-obasan died, he didn’t have anyone else to do it for him. Or rather, he didn’t have anyone else he trusted to do it, so it was down to him to make meals, to mend his clothes and count his meagre stores of ryo and worry about when to request replacement gear from the clan registry, and what to replace first.

In a way, being responsible was simpler now that he, Kakashi and Rin were nukenin. Gear replacement was so frequently beyond their budget that it could be ignored entirely. Meals were pretty much just rice or millet and whatever they could forage for or catch to supplement it. Their clothes needed washing much more often than they needed mending, and as for keeping their living space clean, it didn’t take very long when said living space was someone’s unused storage shed, or yet another riverbank or small, musty cave.

The worst part of it was being the only one that would talk. Or rather, the only one that either Kakashi or Rin would listen to, in an argument.

After their terrifying brush with ANBU from the village, Obito had thought that things would be different. Arrogant, disdainful and snide as Kakashi was, he’d still come back to warn them when they most needed it, and though it annoyed Obito that he’d been so superior as to turn a blind eye to the one ANBU he’d apparently noticed back in that village in Grass, Obito had been grudgingly willing to let that misstep slide.

After all, it wasn’t Kakashi’s fault that he was too stupid to recognize that Obito and Rin were too awesome to just randomly be trailed and caught and dragged back to Konoha so soon, even when a bunch of ANBU tried to do it.

(Rin had been so embarrassingly apologetic when she figured out Obito had got the last ANBU that Obito, flushing red all over, had made up excuses to go off and hunt rather than stay in camp to be stared at by her and her clone’s excessively sympathetic gazes. He still didn’t know how trying to make sure he didn’t become the kind of lawless monster people imagined when you said ‘nukenin’ had gone so very wrong. But with Kakashi there again, Kakashi’s very presence skewing things, there was no way Obito would be able to explain the real reason why he didn’t want to kill people anymore without sounding like he was trying to act tough.)

(Obito had been sick after his first kill because it had been easy, so easy it’d made his legs weak with relief. He’d gladly moved on to worrying about whether he’d fuck up the timing of the kill instead of the thing itself, and it wasn’t until Sensei reprimanded Rin for making their kill counts a competition that Obito realized he’d been taking it all a bit too lightly.)

Anyway, with Kakashi having reluctantly joined them as nukenin, and all question of his going back to Konoha to rescue Sensei having been quietly, permanently shelved, Obito had thought the tension between the three of them would smooth over. He’d even half expected that maybe Rin would bring some of the unspoken subjects up the way she did for everything else, at nearly the worst time anyone wanted to hear them.

Instead, Rin said nothing. And so Kakashi said nothing, because far be it from _the_ Hatake Kakashi to voluntarily apologize for selling his best friend and his former teammate out. What the two of them did instead of talking about desertion or betrayal was that, every few days, they’d get into it over some minor, stupid issue, such as who would stand watch first or whether to detour into Rivers again for a bit, and treat the resulting argument like it was one to decide the fate of all ninja everywhere.

Then, when Obito got sick of hearing them go at it, or when one of them had decided that they needed backup from him to keep from losing the stupid argument, they’d turn to him mid-yell, or (in the case of the worse arguments) take him aside and try to get him to weigh in on the whole thing.

Rin, true to form, was always very clear about what she was asking him to do. “Rin-Rin’s sick of that tone of his,” she’d grouse. “It’s not like it even matters! Just, just say you think Rivers would be a nice change of pace or something, whatever, I don’t care. You’re the tie, so if you want Rivers, that’s where we’ll go, and Kaka-baka will have to just fucking put up with it. Okay?”

(Obito was very careful with how often he said no to Rin. She’d stopped getting back at him for every little thing these days, in favour of giving him this, this troubled, unhappy _look_ , one that never failed to make him panic and skew in her favour so obviously that Kakashi would make snide comments about Obito afterwards.)

Kakashi, on the other hand, was his usual asshole self even when he was requesting (demanding) Obito’s help. “Rivers is a mess right now, okay? Don’t you remember that guy in Ohashi talking about how Kiri hunter nin have been combing through Rivers lately? I’m not saying they’re looking for Rin, not necessarily, but just the fact that it’s a possibility…”

It wasn’t just the words he said, either, but the way he said them, low and measured, his hand heavy on Obito’s shoulder, his only expression a small, slight frown, his mouth pressed into a thin, serious line. Every inch of him was practically shouting that this wasn’t just about a silly argument, or about Kakashi being the one to win this time. No, no, no, it was about keeping Rin safe, and wasn’t Obito the worst teammate for even considering not taking Kakashi’s side when there was so much at stake?

(Sometimes, Obito wished he hadn’t been the one to suggest that it was high time Kakashi got rid of the habit of constantly wearing a mask. There was something weirdly distracting about being able to see his mouth actually moving as he talked.)

(Also, how fucking unfair was it that Obito had only had to look at Rin a few more times than was normal before Kakashi noticed, and started to assume all kinds of stupid, _stupid_ things? He hadn’t said anything about it directly to Obito yet, but that just made the times he deliberately made things about keeping up with Rin or keeping Rin safe stand out even more.)

“You really think I’m an idiot, don’t you?” Obito spat, in response. “First, Rivers being a mess is _profitable_. If we do Ito-sama’s caravan escort, she’ll pay us double for the run, _double_ , okay? And don’t even try and give me that look, you know just as well as I do that Kiri’s too busy killing each other over who’ll be Mizukage to bother with anyone else, let alone Rin.”

Somehow, they ended up taking Ito-sama’s escort anyway, without the argument having been settled. Probably because Ito-sama was the kind of woman it was hard to say no to, since she made everything she wanted sound so reasonable and obvious and not at all like it would be a hassle. Which it was, because Obito _hated_ cutting through the snarled jungle paths of Rivers. He hated how the rain there was warm and the opposite of refreshing. He hated the mosquitoes (they were bigger than Fire mosquitoes, and the repellent just made them hover a few inches away from you, like they were hoping it’d wash off with sweat or rain or both and let them move back in to feast on you). He hated how noisy the chakra of these trees were, he hated how he could almost hear them and everything else green growing, and how easy it was to end up spurring on that growth if he didn’t stay focused.

The massages Rin gave him when he complained about that were the only plus. It wasn’t just that he liked her touching him—okay, that was a good bit of it, even when it was the end of their shift and he felt both disgustingly sticky and ready to collapse onto his bedroll. It was also the fact that she wasn’t afraid to lean in and make it hurt a little bit, and that she knew her muscle groups, and knew how much he could take.

“Okay?” she would ask him, now and then, and though it always took a ‘hmm’ or a boneless nod from Obito to get her going again, that wasn’t bad either. It just made it feel even more like she really cared, and that was always nice.

(Obito was pretty sure that his ability to keep his reactions to Rin’s moderately painful massages to brief, soundless sighs was more than a little unnerving to her. But he was never, ever, ever going to tell her why he’d learned how to be quiet, not even though he was almost sure she thought Madara had used to punish him or torture him or something if he cried out.)

“Pervert,” Kakashi liked to murmur, whenever Rin had just walked off after the massage. Sometimes, he’d wait until late at night, when Rin was off on watch and the dogs were all definitely asleep, and then he’d shift on his bedroll and say it. Or worse, he’d turn over just as Obito was getting close to coming, then raise his eyebrows and say, “what, _again_?”

There was no doubt that he did that sort of thing on purpose. Obito didn’t know how he would have borne with it if he hadn’t grown up as an Uchiha, especially since he was someone that no one ever cared to even bother to try to hide the facts of life from. Even with the knowledge Obito had gleaned by sneaking into (i.e. boldly walking into) the blunt, yet secretive lectures all Uchiha men of a certain age were required to attend, he’d been embarrassed enough to die the first time Kakashi made it clear that he could definitely smell what Obito had just been doing half an hour ago.

Thankfully, that horrible day was three years in the past, and Obito had weathered enough of Kakashi’s teasing since then that he was pretty much numb to it. It had helped that the lectures had made it clear that he wasn’t abnormal for wanting—no, _needing_ it as often as he did, but what truly helped was the inescapable knowledge that, to tease him, Kakashi had to think about it too.

“I’m not the only pervert here,” was Obito’s usual go-to response. Or, better, as he’d just said tonight: “I’m not bothering anyone.” And then, when Kakashi opened his mouth to say something, Obito had added: “You know, anyone that matters.”

The reason Obito could say that so comfortably was because he was quite sure that if Rin ever found out how often he masturbated, or that he was doing it at all, he would be in for the most mercilessly embarrassing length of teasing that he’d ever experienced in his entire life. And Rin wouldn’t blush a little while she did it either, the way Obito had once caught Kakashi doing. Rin’s eyes would sparkle. She would make _helpful suggestions_. And then Obito would get hard and so hot in the face that he’d think he was about to die, and then maybe Rin would inch a little closer, and—

“Hey,” Kakashi said, in a low, strangled whisper, “you’re not, you’re not thinking about me and doing that, are you?”

“I am _now_ ,” Obito snarled, unable to help himself, “because you won’t _shut up_.” Usually he kept his motions small, relying on a tight, twisting grip to do most of the work, so as not to make loud sounds or really obvious movements under his blanket. Right now, though, he was just so irritated at the interruption of his fantasy that he sped up, swallowing audibly as he lengthened his strokes, heedless of how much Kakashi could hear. “Why can’t you just ignore it?”

“Why the hell should I have to? You do it nearly every night!”

“Leaving camp just to do it compromises security.” Alright, now Obito was starting to feel a little guilty, partly because Kakashi was right; every night was probably pushing it. And partly because just listening to Kakashi’s indignant tone as he stroked himself was making him feel it more, feel it in a way he was dead certain Kakashi would disapprove of. “Look, I know it’s—I’ll try to cut back, okay?”

“Cut back starting from right fucking now,” Kakashi snapped. “You don’t think I know you’ve been rubbing it this whole time? Disgusting.”

Obito swallowed again, helplessly. Fuck, maybe he really was a pervert. Normal people didn’t get even harder when they heard their teammates belittle them. Normal people didn’t shiver as their minds spun up the compelling vision of being forced to kneel down on the dirt and spill it out for their teammates to watch. The only remotely normal thing on Obito’s mind right now was the thought of how shaky Kakashi’s last few words had sounded, and even that was polluted by his sudden, irresistible hope for what it might mean. “Are you doing it?”

“Who would ever—”

“You’ve done it before, right?” Obito slowed his strokes again, aching for an answer, even though he knew it might simply be the thwack of an empty bag or a spare stick of firewood being hurled at the foot of his bedroll. “I could…” _Come on, there’s no way **he** needs to be shown what to do. Try something more realistic._ “Wanna do it together?”

“Fuck off,” Kakashi bit out. That there was no other response, that all Obito could hear for the next few moments was the other boy’s harsh, unsteady breaths was horribly tantalizing. Then, just as Obito was about to give up: “I don’t… need… your help.” The raw contempt in those words made them stand out in Obito’s head, gave the thing they revealed an extra, delicious weight.

 _Is he an idiot?_ Obito thought, even as he reached down to give his balls a thorough squeeze. _Doesn’t this already count as doing it together?_

Then, after he’d come, as he listened to the telltale rustles and choked breaths coming from the direction of Kakashi’s bedroll, he thought: _I bet it won’t take much to get him to let me ‘help’._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two coming up soon. Prepare yourself for even more awkward teen shennanigans.


	16. Interlude: Obito, team pervert (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Obito decides to embrace his new role at just the wrong time.

After that pivotal night, Obito teasing Kakashi while he (and, reluctantly, Kakashi) masturbated became a regular thing. The group couldn’t afford books yet, not easily, much less porn, and so Obito justified his secret reign of terror to himself as something he did because doing it on your own got kind of boring after a while.

To be polite, he cut back to once every other night. Then, when Kakashi needled him for being too horny to function, he cut back to every third night. However, the more Obito cut back, the more aggressive their evening banter got, especially after it was revealed that Kakashi’s supposedly sure-fire method for taming his own urges was to abstain for a couple days and then force himself to come really hard twice in a row.

It really was in a row, too, something Obito had flatly refused to believe until he saw it, saw Kakashi smirking at him across the low-burning fire, the other boy’s usual prudishness cast aside in favour of exposing that still-sticky, shockingly hard cock.

That was the first time Obito let himself admit that maybe, just maybe Rin hadn’t been all that far off base, imagining that there was something going on between him and Kakashi. The fact that he’d been happy to snicker to himself over the absurdity of the idea all this time only made it worse, because the something that was going on was once again entirely on Obito’s side.

(Obito couldn’t even complain that Kakashi should have known better than to, to just shove down his blanket and his underwear and just start going at it, because that had been the dare. The fact that it had nearly killed Obito to watch the mesmerizing sight his teammate made half-naked in the firelight was just Obito’s shitty luck.)

Somehow, Obito managed not to give in to the urge to use his eye to record it all. Thankfully, once Kakashi was satisfied he’d proved himself superior (handily ignoring the fact that maybe _he_ was the one too horny to function if he really felt he needed to come twice in a session to be satisfied), the whole thing stopped being an argument or even a real competition, and became something they did to better pass the nights.

Rin had yet to catch them at it partly because they were both very careful not to ever start anything until it was her watch (she almost always took the first night watch because she liked staying up late), and because if she happened to come back early, anything they had been planning to do was cancelled. _“I’m not letting you drag her into this—this **filth** ,”_ Kakashi had whispered, the very first time that had happened, but he probably knew deep down that the person he was really protecting with that high-minded statement was himself.

* * *

When their luck finally ran out, it ran out just when they least expected it.

Originally, the thought of bedding down in the ryokan in Ichinohe for sort-of-free made Obito pleased enough to swagger around a little. That it meant giving in to Ito-san’s urging to sign on as her regular guards for the shitty route that started here and went through Rivers every other month was something he could almost forgive, when it meant the chance to lounge around and do certain other things inside, in a real bedroom, and on what would either be a very comfortable futon or an actual bed.

After all, it wasn’t as if he and Kakashi could get up to anything while all three of them (twelve, with San and the dogs) were crammed into a single inn room for security. There was something ironic about the fact that their semi-nightly entertainment was only possible was they were out on the road, since whoever was on watch was always expected to set up their camouflaged listening post a little ways off from the main camp.

In town, setting up on a rooftop or in the alley across from their lodgings was something they only did while on a job, simply because it meant a higher chance of being noticed. Acting like you were expecting some random attack on your team in the middle of the night made people think you had something to hide. And the last thing they wanted while getting in some sleep in actual beds was to have to worry about attracting extra attention just for trying to follow the protocol they’d been taught.

(Technically, the dogs _could_ stand watch while they were in town, but they only ever did so if the group was on the job and someone was injured. Obito had asked, only to be told with a disdainful sniff that guard duty was absolutely not within a ninken’s remit.)

Anyway, when Obito found out that their suite in the ryokan had two bedrooms and a sitting room, his mind boiled over with plans. They’d all take turns in the lavish bath, the way they usually did when off duty, so there’d be no chance for anything interesting then, but once it was time for bed…

Dinner was even more enjoyable with that to look forward to. Obito had yet to ever propose any dares that included him and Kakashi touching each other, half because it felt a little too revealing to do so, and half because laying out his bedroll close enough to Kakashi’s that it would be possible was an easy way to get teased to death. Tonight, though, with the sturdy beds they’d already seen in their rooms, Obito wouldn’t have to do anything other than go over and sit down beside Kakashi and start things up with a wicked grin.

He thought he could manage that. He _knew_ he could.

However, just as things were starting to go the way Obito had wanted, and Kakashi had gone from elbowing him to force him to keep his distance to sliding a hand inside Obito’s already tented boxers, the door to the sitting room was kicked open.

“Rin-Rin’s—oh?”

The fact that Obito’s gaze was already firmly fixed on Kakashi’s face meant that he could see the other boy’s usual, infuriating smirk fade away immediately, replaced by an expression that was utterly blank. _How dare he,_ Obito thought, his face on fire, his cock twitching in Kakashi’s suddenly too-tight grip. _Why am I the only one flushing red enough to fucking die?_

Obito could only think right then; movement was beyond him. Not so for Kakashi, whose blank calm was entirely at odds with the slow, fumbling way he was now trying to drag his hand out of Obito’s boxers. _Stop it,_ Obito wanted to scream. _Don’t you know you’re only making it more obvious?_

“This isn’t—”

“Rin-Rin just wanted to try and trade one of you in return for not having to take first watch,” Rin said, smoothly, her gaze feeling like a harsh spotlight on Obito’s back. “Since you two are busy, whoever wants to trade can just come find Rin-Rin afterwards, okay?”

And then she was retreating with a light step, closing the door after her with a gentle click, all while Obito began to hyperventilate.

“Hey,” Kakashi said, through gritted teeth, his other hand coming to grip Obito’s left shoulder, “you know how loud that is, right? Calm down, or she’ll hear you. _Listen to me._ ”

“I-I—hgh—hnn—”

“Shut up.”

“Your h-hand is—”

“Aren’t you fucking enjoying it?” Kakashi sounded so furious that, even though Obito had already calmed down somewhat, shocked out of his panicky state by the sudden, undeniable pleasure of Kakashi’s hand moving— _moving_ on him—he didn’t dare say anything back. “Desperate as you are, what fucking right do you think you have to get hard thinking of her?”

“I’m not! I didn’t—”

“You think I didn’t feel you twitch when you heard her voice?”

“Th-that doesn’t m-mean…” Obito dearly wanted to protest that this, that asking these questions like this simply wasn’t fair. He wanted Kakashi to stop. He wanted Kakashi to hurry up and put that hand back inside his boxers and touch him directly instead of stroking him through the cloth. “Stop…”

“Stop what? I’m measuring you like you wanted, aren’t I?” Kakashi dragged and shoved and pushed and dragged again, forcing Obito’s uncoordinated, uncooperative body down onto the bed. “You asked for it. You wanted to settle who’s bigger, right?”

The next few moments were spent in panting, mortified silence. Kakashi only stopped stroking long enough to press every inch of himself down against Obito’s prone form. He didn’t feel bigger, but it was humiliating anyway, the fact that even though Kakashi was just as hard, he was calm and steady as he rubbed against Obito, his slightly sped up breaths drowned out by Obito’s reluctant moans.

“You don’t deserve Rin,” Kakashi all but snarled, his breath hot against the side of Obito’s neck. “Say it.”

“N-no.” But Kakashi, undeterred, went on thrusting, his arm a hard bar across Obito’s chest. His hand was wrapped around both their bare, slightly slippery cocks, forcing them to slide together. “ _You_ don’t—you’re the one who’s—”

“I know how you sound when you’re going to come,” Kakashi said. “You’re closer than I am, aren’t you? You’re enjoying this.”

“You…” _You are too,_ Obito wanted to snarl back, but all the breath in his body seemed trapped in his lungs. He felt—this felt—the way Kakashi was moving on top of him made him feel like he was being pinned down and fucked. It was humiliating. It was so good that he had to grit his teeth to keep from whining out loud. He didn’t want to admit the bastard was right, that he _was_ enjoying it, enjoying that he didn’t have to do anything to get what he wanted. Enjoying that he could just lie there and be stroked, pressed down, teased— “ _Ugh!_ ”

“I knew it,” Kakashi panted, his voice rough, his tone low and gloating. “I knew it, you—you fucking—ngh—”

Somehow, it didn’t surprise Obito at all when the sticky, slick warmth that had already stained the front of his boxers was joined by another hot splash after a few more breathless moments. Nor was he surprised by the way Kakashi jerked up and away from him almost as soon as it happened.

Obito _was_ surprised at the fact that Kakashi just staggered up off the bed without saying anything, then reached down, grabbed his pack and hauled it over to Obito’s bed. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not sleeping on sheets that have your filthy crap all over them,” was the low, furious response. “Don’t even think about coming over here.”

* * *

The worst thing about all that had happened wasn’t just that long, terrifyingly awkward sleepless night, or the fact that Kakashi pretended he didn’t exist for something like a whole month and refused to hear anything about masturbating together again. The _real_ worst thing was that Rin didn’t seem to think that anything out of the ordinary had happened. She didn’t so much as wink at them whenever she walked off to start her watch, much less try to say something teasing if she came back and found Obito still miserably awake.

All the evidence pointed to the fact that Rin had, if not known precisely what he and Kakashi had been doing, had at least suspected it might be going on, and had chosen to say nothing.

Obito, perfectly aware from the start that nothing serious was ever going to happen between him and either of his teammates, tried to comfort himself by thinking that it didn’t make any difference to be rejected (Kakashi) or blithely ignored (Rin) this soon. It didn’t help.

* * *

Masturbating after that was… was there a word for something painfully awkward and yet somehow irresistible? Obito had long been relying on a quick, stolen session before his morning baths to take the edge off when he couldn’t manage anything at night, so it wasn’t all that bad to shift his usual time to then.

What _was_ bad was that he now knew how it felt to do it with someone, to feel someone else panting harshly nearby, their feverish actions only spurring you on. Even the horrible way those moments with Kakashi had ended couldn’t seem to stop him from reliving them again and again, adding on new filthy twists, new exciting elements.

“Maybe,” Obito muttered to himself, one chilly morning, just after he’d finished to the particularly dirty thought of him, Rin _and_ Kakashi, “maybe if I’d seriously chosen to go for one of them, and I wasn’t so desperate…”

A yard or so away, his shadow clone snorted. “But you are,” it said, its flat, harsh tone exactly what he needed to hear. “So stop whining about it and move on.”

“I’m trying,” Obito snarled. Then, as he began to wipe his hands on the hem of the tunic he was planning to wash in a minute, he added: “I really am.”

His clone’s response to that was merciless as always. “Try harder.”

* * *

Two months after the ryokan incident, their second time escorting Wada-san’s lucrative spice caravan from northeastern Wind to Earth’s border with Iron hit a snag. The last team of nukenin that had taken on the job were upset enough about having lost it to the Dragon Group again that they decided to show up in person to make trouble. Which, other than funnelling some extra bounty money into their pockets, wouldn’t really have changed very much about the job if one of the furious nukenin hadn’t been the Gray Mirror, a former Ame nin known for his (or her?) creepy skill with disguises.

Code words weren’t really something they’d ever felt a need for, but Rin had decided it was past time that they thought some up just in case. Normal ninja in their situation would probably have ended up with call signs like ‘the eagle has arrived’ for mutual authentication. The Demon Group, in this regard, proved unhappily abnormal, something Obito would actually have taken joy in if he hadn’t somehow ended up the perpetual centre of the jokes.

Rin identified as ‘turtle’ (because of San), ‘no fish heads’ (because she hated them) and ‘purple sister’ (her second favourite colour). Kakashi was ‘field’ (lazy reference to his last name), ‘hound’ (lazy reference to his dogs) and ‘five fish heads’ (because he liked them). Obito, on the other hand, was ‘bakage’ (Rin: “You’re our cute, idiot shadow demon! It’s even got your favourite character!”), ‘henkage’ (Kakashi: “It fits. You’re definitely strange enough.”) and ‘bakahen’ (Rin: “Let’s combine the two of them!”).

Rin used his code word out loud so many times that even the rocks they passed on the way could probably tell it was related to him. Obito forgave her because she only ever said it at the right time (it was his morning passphrase), and because she said it as if she were smiling.

Kakashi was much more prudent, but that was only because he made a habit of stressing the ‘hen’ in ‘henkage’ whenever he said it. Obito did not forgive him, because it was an insult more than it was a joke, and yet that scornful, drawn-out word started featuring in Obito’s wet dreams anyway.

In the end, it wasn’t until Obito trudged back into the temporary camp with the Grey Mirror’s head under his arm that he finally got his chance for revenge.

“Wait,” Kakashi snapped, stepping into his path. “Identify.”

“What, don’t you recognize me?” Obito found himself saying. “Husband, I’m so hurt.”

It wasn’t on purpose; it was a near-identical copy of a catchphrase from a really quite terrible variety show they’d ended up watching while waiting to meet Wada-san’s broker. It just happened to be the first thing to come out of Obito’s mouth, and yet the half shocked, half furious expression it put on Kakashi’s face was the best thing he’d seen in weeks.

“Identify,” Kakashi said, through gritted teeth. “You _moron_.”

“I couldn’t bring you five fish heads, so I brought this,” Obito said brightly, gesturing at the head he was holding. “Only the best for my husband, riiight?”

“Right,” Rin said, in the slightly wavering tone that indicated she was one wrong word from collapsing into hysterical laughter. “Well done, Kurochin.”

* * *

After that, though things between him and Kakashi weren’t any less tense, they were at least more bearable with such a useful weapon to hand. That Rin seemed to think it was some sort of inside joke between the two of them only made it better, since the last thing Kakashi clearly wanted was to have to explain just why he found it so infuriating.

Sometimes, when it was late at night and too quiet in camp, or when Kakashi was silently stretching to his left after a spar, Obito bitterly regretted the moments he’d dared to want too much. Caustic and annoying as Kakashi’s random comments had always been, Obito couldn’t help but miss them.

Then again, every time he thought of trying to patch things up, something in him baulked at the thought of being the one to apologize. He hadn’t _wanted_ Rin to find them. It could have ended there, too, ended with him and Kakashi sullenly separating and heading off to bed, but of course it hadn’t, and Kakashi had got back up on his high horse afterwards, ignoring and scorning Obito like it had all been his fault.

Obito knew it hadn’t been his fault. Thin comfort that it was to think that, he couldn’t help but hang on to it anyway. He’d hang onto it even after he eventually gave in and apologized one day, and years later, he’d take sadistic pleasure in reminding Kakashi of the one time Kakashi had been the pervert, the one that couldn’t control themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive me for terrible fangirl Japanese puns /o\\. Next chapter, it's back to Rin~


	17. Love, love, love (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The summer she turned fourteen, Rin fell in love for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, it's the romance arc! Which, because it's me writing it, has ended up kind of bloody and weird and full of tons of dumbass teenage arguments. Hopefully you'll still find it fun ;D
> 
> Quick money primer for better visualization purposes: 1 ryo (Narutoverse's main currency), per the Naruto wiki, is equal to 10 yen. So 100 ryo would be ¥1000, which is currently just under $10.

### (Rin, fourteen and a bit years old)

The summer she turned fourteen, Rin fell in love for the first time. It was one of the things she clearly remembered from her previous life, the tide of emotion that had swept her up, inexorable, frightening in its strength.

It had been as cliche as you could imagine, that first love. She could remember the way she’d felt whenever she saw his face, his smile; she remembered the way she’d burned for simple things like brushing against him, or being the one to hold his sword while he washed clean his hands. She remembered being half disgusted, half proud at the degree to which she’d obsessed over everything to do with him. She remembered masturbating to thoughts of his smell, of the shape of his thighs outlined by the clinging cloth of his trousers.

She remembered, too, the way his face had blanched upon seeing her after her first, pivotal battle. She’d been drenched, her armour slick, her tunic and the padding beneath it heavy with the weight of blood, and of course she’d been grinning madly, glad of her survival, glad of the functioning of her new spellsword. She’d found his widened eyes and the way he shrank away from her a bit hurtful, but still so very terribly like him that it stopped being disappointing and started being cute.

But battle after battle after battle had blunted her feelings, had wearied her for everything but food (sustenance, strength to keep moving) and sleep (time to recharge). She didn’t know what had become of him, or of anyone else she’d ever wanted that way. Near the end, she had been too tired, too heartsick from former losses to ask. She’d chose to believe, instead, that he and the other boys she’d loved had all become shy, doting husbands to one of the men or women that she’d planned to sacrifice her life to protect. That they were all sheltered by her might on the chill evening she went out onto the fields of—the fields of somewhere, alone, sword and magery in hand, ready to trade her life’s breath for the kind of thorough destruction that her Family’s enemies would never recover from.

She didn’t remember her first love’s name, much less any of the others. And yet, against all odds, as she trudged her way back to camp after a successful rabbit hunt, she couldn’t help but think of the dim shapes of their faces, and of all the emotion that had accompanied the sight of them for her.

In a way, it was inevitable that she should think of it. Rin had turned fourteen just a few months ago, and now it was summer. Her fourteenth summer.

Sadly, the fact that it was her fourteenth summer was pretty much the only thing these long, wretched days had in common with the ones she vaguely remembered. Summer in her old time had meant warmth, had meant sweating in light linen, bathing in ponds and basking in the sun’s heat afterwards. Summer had meant exercise and harvest and the tournament of stars, that last because magic was thought to be strongest when the sun was at its height.

Summer here meant being forever sticky, forever hot, forever on the verge of stifling to death. Chakra circulation helped, but not nearly enough, especially when you were sneaking about behind enemy lines and trying to keep a low profile. And now that the entire world had essentially become enemy territory for her, Obito and Kakashi, summer meant a much more persistent kind of hell.

“I would kill someone for ice cream,” Obito was muttering, as he fiddled with one of the traps on the perimeter. “I would kill _so many people_.”

“No one’s stopping you from heading back to Biei for some tonight,” was Kakashi’s unsympathetic response. “So long as you’re ready to move on time tomorrow, you can run all the way south to Ichinohe if you feel like it.”

“Ugh, oh god, don’t remind me,” Obito said, a sob in his voice. “Whose bright idea was it to take an escort through to Wind Country again?”

“It was Wind or Rivers, and we all chose Wind,” Rin called out, unsealing the two rabbits she’d picked up earlier on as she got closer to the low, carefully shielded fire. “Don’t even think about whining tomorrow when it’s time to start off.”

“But Ri-in…”

“It’s dry heat most of the way, and it’ll be cooler in the mountains at the end,” Kakashi snapped. “It isn’t going to fucking kill you.”

“Who’s cooking tonight, again?” Rin hastened to say. “Kaka-kun was last night, and Rin-Rin went the night before, but Rin-Rin’s missed a few turns this month, so…”

“Just set that down and leave it to me,” Obito said, waggling an elbow in her direction. “You can pay for it by taking point tomorrow.”

Rin, having half expected that condition, still couldn’t help but sigh. She didn’t _dis_ like cooking, even when it had to be done with fewer tools and far fewer ingredient options than she would have liked. But even though she wasn’t particularly in the mood to do it tonight, she also very much wasn’t in the mood to take point tomorrow, ‘point’ meaning the position of nagging everyone until they got up and packed up camp and set off for the agreed-upon meeting point in Sekigahara, where they would rendezvous with the caravan they were scheduled to escort deep into northwestern Wind Country.

(Point, in ninja parlance, was the primary attacker or mover on-mission, but considering how few fights they got into these days, its meaning amongst them had long since changed.)

“I could cook?” That was San, his voice echoing oddly, possibly because he had his head stuck into the rain barrel he was inspecting the interior of. “It’s just making soup with the meat and reheating the rice, right?”

“Don’t we still have some fried eggplant?” Kakashi asked, doing his duty as the most responsible Demon Group member with regard to eating vegetables and vegetable-like things. “We should finish that too, if there’s any left.”

And so they put together and ate a moderately balanced meal, after about an hour and a half of San fussing unnecessarily over every step of the process for preparing and cooking both rabbits. Rin, as always, only began to regret passing off cooking duty to him after going through what felt like half the storage spaces in her rings for his sake just to find some coriander. Which was old enough that it probably made no difference to the overall taste, but you try standing up to San about spices and the consequence of a dish lacking in them at this time of night.

* * *

Somehow, when the next day dawned, Rin found herself taking point anyway, by virtue of the fact that she’d been woken up by San’s clone merging back into her an hour before they were really supposed to be up. “How long, this time?” she’d murmured, only to receive embarrassed silence in response. “Oh for—don’t tell me you forgot to keep track _again_.”

“I think it was fifty-eight hours at the time you came back with the rabbits last night…?”

Rin, already sluggishly peeling herself up off her bedroll, had to pause for a bit to tamp down on the urge to growl at him. Not because he’d mind it, but because her growls were worryingly noticeable these days, especially when he’d just poured his chakra back into her. It wasn’t anything to do with her vocal chords, which her monthly check-ups and self-examinations showed hadn’t changed at all. It was something to do with the way her chakra rippled or tensed while she growled, something about the mere fact that she was voicing her displeasure that reflected in her aura.

San didn’t sound anywhere as disturbing when _he_ growled while he was (mostly) separate. So while his chakra probably amplified things a bit, the true culprit was Rin.

“I don’t know why this bothers you so much,” he said, now, his chakra making a lazy loop through her coils. “It’s nothing compared to, well, to what you showed me things were like for you, before.”

Rin had nothing to say to that. She’d been careful while constructing the seals in her rings, careful to design their overall effect for sneaking and hiding rather than the kind of brute force intimidation her rings had produced in her last life. Sound amplification was just one of the things that had got baked in for free, since sound dampening used many of the same patterns in reverse.

The entire point of her rings wasn’t for them to just be a handy tool, a weapon she had to consciously draw on. The point in welding them onto her fingers at such a young age was for them to grow to be part of her, an extension of her chakra system in just the way her hands were an extension of her arms. There was no point in being angry that they sometimes worked when she wished they wouldn’t, especially when just a little focused attention on her part could cancel out their effect.

Rin was angry anyway. It was morning, and dark, and her body felt ever so slightly stiff from sleeping on what was essentially lightly padded rock, and she didn’t _want_ to have to focus in order not to startle the boys awake in a quiet panic. She wanted to just—just—

“Do you want a hug?” San said, tentatively. “You know, even if I can’t right now, one of the boys could…”

Now, Rin couldn’t help but growl.

“Wha…?” Sometimes, instead of silently startling awake and going for a kunai or rushing through the hand seals for summoning his dogs, Kakashi would jolt awake and start fighting with the blanket he was rolled up in, just like he was doing right now. “Wha’s goin’ on?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Obito said, from the other side of the camp, his red eye fixed on Rin. Rin still didn’t know why it creeped her out that he could wake so silently when she knew how to do the same thing, and had indeed been part of the sadistic process that had honed his skills in doing so. “Go back to sleep, it’s not time yet.”

Kakashi, frowning, didn’t settle until Rin waved at him. Only then did he lie back down and pull the disordered blankets tight around himself.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Obito asked, his voice pitched deliberately low. “You look a little…”

“I’m fine,” Rin said, and that was the end of the discussion.

* * *

Three weeks later, exhausted from a long but uneventful escort trip, they had only to look at each other to silently agree that they would be staying the night in Fuso. Their next job wasn’t for a week and a half, which was more than enough time to make the run down south to Hisayama to meet up with Ito-san’s group even if they were delayed for a couple days.

They were dragging their feet as they went up to their inn room when everything fell apart. Bull was in front, sniffing suspiciously at every other step up the dark, musty-smelling staircase, Uhei chivvying him forward now and then with the occasional apologetic glance back in Kakashi’s direction.

Rin was just smiling to herself, thinking of how flabbergasted their recent clients would be to see the perpetually snarling, bristling greyhound behaving so obediently, when she sensed—

_Moved_ —

Fuck, but getting a kunai in the shoulder hurt. She’d always hated the feeling of the steel sliding out through her back, but this way the steel was in someone who could quickly drag it out and heal the wound without stopping for more than a breath. This way, that fucking steel wasn’t in Kakashi yet again.

Five unknown signatures around them. Four, with the confused kunai owner’s neck in Rin’s claws, and then very suddenly just two, one of which tried to run.

Bull bit a mouthful of the non-runner’s trouser leg just long enough that Kakashi could flash behind them and stun them with a nasty, sizzling jolt of lightning chakra. Obito was already gone, hunting the poor fool that thought being unable to see anyone ghosting down the stairs after them meant that they had gotten away.

“Are you okay?” Kakashi’s tone was almost disturbingly flat, even as he braced underneath the weight of the person he’d stunned into insensibility. “Rin?”

She realized she was holding the kunai she’d pulled out of her shoulder. And then, when she glanced down at the bodies nearest to her, she realized that she’d somehow hacked in half the original owner in addition to crushing their neck. Sloppy. “I’m just a little rattled,” she heard herself say. “It’s been a while since Rin-Rin’s had to heal on the go.”

Kakashi’s mouth flattened, but he let that obvious dismissal pass, focusing on tying up the guy he’d stunned. Rin, shaking a little, lost a minute to forcefully cycling her and San’s chakra around to clear her head. Then, squaring her shoulders, she crouched down to start searching the various corpses before her.

She’d found an empty medium-capacity storage scroll, an unused coil of decent quality ninja wire, two different wrinkled copies of the Demon Group’s bounty registration picture and almost eight thousand ryo by the time Obito appeared to walk out of the wall to her left. “That one’s alive, right?” he said, even as he stalked toward the person Kakashi had left tied up in a less bloody corner of the landing. “Can I take him?”

“Sure,” Rin said, without bothering to look. A moment later, the familiar, sizzling warmth of Kakashi’s chakra began to approach up the stairs, followed by two much more muted signatures. By the time the innkeeper and her tall, hulking husband could see any of the carnage, Obito and his stunned bit of baggage had already disappeared. “Oh, Amari-san, we’re so sorry for the inconvenience—”

“It’s nothing,” was the low, halting reply. “Gin-san said they, they wanted to rob you…?”

‘Gin-san’, a.k.a. Kakashi’s Demon Group persona, pointedly avoided Rin’s annoyed gaze. “Yes,” she found herself forced to lie, politely, even though she could see the disbelief on Amari-san’s face. “We just took payment late last night, with a bonus. They must have heard about it somehow.”

Which was, if not bullshit, then so very close to it that it was nigh on indistinguishable from it. But Fuso was a sleepy trading post in the arid, mountainous area of northwest Wind, and the Demon Group had been the ones to escort in the all-important bimonthly parts delivery for the spice millers these last three trips. So even that paper-thin excuse was enough to smooth things over, especially when accompanied by the thoughtful gift of five thousand ryo (calmly accepted) and an equally thoughtful offer to get rid of the bodies and mop up some of the blood (politely refused).

There was no official police force in Fuso, just a hard-eyed magistrate and some councilmen and women whose old scars and smooth manner painted them as either former ninja or samurai. They cared only to compare the faces of the Demon Group’s supposed robbers to the bingo books they had on hand, and when only one of the robbers turned up, and not as a very high bounty, the town authorities was quite happy to cede the possession of his head back to Rin.

That night, there was no sleep. The inn room had already been paid for, so nothing stopped Kakashi, Rin and the dogs from simply screening their signatures and setting off out of town on a fast run. Obito popped in periodically to check on them, plus reorient them in the right direction. It would have been eerie how he always seemed to appear just at the right time if Rin hadn’t known in the back of her mind about the seals they all carried these days, seals that even Kakashi’s dogs had inked onto their collars.

(Being unable to get her head around Sensei’s technique hadn’t meant she’d been unable to get anything out of Kakashi’s shitty attempt at teaching it at all.)

It was half a day and a couple extra, gruelling hours before they slowed for good.

“You’re sure about this?” Kakashi said, after he’d gulped his fill of water. “He’s from Kumo, nukenin or not. Doing anything to him this publicly will be a bit…”

“What,” Rin snapped, “excessive?” She was still working off the rush of anger she’d felt on hearing from Obito that the reason Kajiwara had decided to lay a hand on her and hers was because he’d analysed intelligence about the Demon Group and deduced from it the fact that at least one of them might have some kind of special doujutsu. “It’s no more and no less than what that asshole deserves.” Trying to poach Ito-san’s regular Wind-Rivers route from them one thing; coveting Obito’s eye was another. “It’s high time we made an example of him.”

Kakashi’s dubious glance told her everything he was thinking. “It’s a risk,” he said, anyway. “Getting rid of him is one thing; doing it in public is another.”

Rin really, really wished he wasn’t making the kind of point she knew she couldn’t just growl at him for. She wanted to growl at something, and just the thought of having to limit herself made her want to punch an inconveniently large crater into the sandblasted floor of the cave that was going to serve as their shitty campsite for the afternoon.

“Rin?”

“We’ll vote on it,” Rin forced out. They’d started out having a simple three-way vote on anything they didn’t all agree on, and it’d slowly become an iron-clad tradition. Nowadays, the dogs all counted as the fourth vote, and San as the fifth, and little as it tended to change the results of the votes, it kept all of them happy.

The thing that went unsaid was the fact that they didn’t vote about anything really important. In cases like that, the decision fell to whoever was taking point (this time, in the standard meaning of the word), or to Rin. Her suggesting they vote on Kajiwara’s fate was as good as admitting she wouldn’t contest the thought of a private kill.

Obito joined them midway through the process of rigging a cover at the mouth of the cave to make more shade for their bedrolls. “Oh?” he said immediately, his boot nudging at the foot of the post Kakashi was currently struggling with. “Weren’t we going to go for him tonight?”

“We’re going in tomorrow evening,” Kakashi said, firmly, before Rin could so much as open up her pursed mouth. “Can you do lunch?”

“Sure, just a sec.”

“Hey, don’t—for fuck’s sake!” Rin, beside herself, had no chance to do more than gesture foully in Obito’s direction before he’d faded out of view again, most likely having headed into Hisayama to buy their meals. “How many times do we have to fucking tell him, huh? Is picking up street food really worth pushing himself until he’s crying blood?”

“It’s his eye, Rin,” Kakashi said. “Just the same way that it was your shoulder, earlier.”

A sudden, desperately awkward silence descended, broken only by the loud scrape of the post finally settling into place. “I healed it,” Rin muttered. “It’s not the same. _He_ can’t—”

“Can’t he?”

“Even if he can, there are limits,” Rin snapped. “He only has that eye; stressing it unnecessarily—”

“Don’t even try to pretend he’s not as durable as you are,” was the cold response. “Balancing out what that bastard did to him turned him into a fucking tank. Besides, he didn’t actually cry blood that time; he burst a vessel and forgot to clear it up after the fight.”

_Whose fucking side is he on?_ Rin ranted, to San, because she knew that saying something that irrational out loud would only prompt an even more maddening response. (“I’m on the side of _reason_.” “I’m on the side of _common sense_.”)

_You have to admit,_ San thought back at her, _it takes a certain amount of bravery to say something so snotty to you when you’re like this._

Growling under her breath, Rin set about unsealing and laying out their bedrolls side by side within the cramped confines of the cave, only remembering to add a fourth under the canopy when Akino whined at her. “You guys know how spoiled you are, right?” she couldn’t help but say, as she spread out the fluffiest bedroll their group owned. “Sleeping on this cloud-like crap while we sleep on what might as well be a brick, Rin-Rin really ought to put you all to work to pay for the difference.” That said bedroll had been ceded to the dogs’ exclusive use precisely because no one else that needed one could get comfortable on it was besides the point. “Yosh, it’s settled! You guys will take Rin-Rin’s watch tonight.”

Pakkun, already having occupied his favourite depression towards the foot of the bedroll, made a rude snorting sound at her in lieu of an answer.

“It’s not your watch anyway,” Kakashi said, his deliberately mild tone just another goad to Rin’s simmering temper. “You’re injured, remember?”

Two could play at that game. Smiling, Rin straightened from the crouch she’d sunk into while laying out the bedroll. “Kaka-kun is _so_ smart to know Rin-Rin was only joking,” she said, in the most sugary tone possible. “Rin-Rin was being so serious, too! Kaka-kun, has anyone ever told you—”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?” Ever since they’d stopped for the night, the shoulder she’d been stabbed in had been aching, but Rin had been too angry to feel it much. Lowering herself to a seat on her usual bedroll intensified the ache somewhat, but Rin couldn’t bear to put an end to the charade so early just because of it. “Can you read Rin-Rin’s mind? If you can, you have to know it, riiiight? Rin-Rin wasn’t going to say anything bad about _you_.”

However, instead of snapping out his usual curt response to that sort of teasing, Kakashi simply ignored her, opening his pack and fishing out the spare medical kit that was always the first thing you could reach in it. Annoyed, Rin switched to a more comfortable cross-legged seat, unsealing her own, much more minimal kit from one of her rings.

She was soon so absorbed in glumly surveying the caked blood on the front of her third-favourite tunic that it took her a long moment to register that Kakashi was now kneeling impatiently on the bedroll behind her. “What?”

“You don’t want help?”

“I was just about to make my clone—”

“ _Fuck_ your clone.” Aggressive as his tone was, his touch was gentle when he lifted her low, messy ponytail so that it draped over her uninjured shoulder and down her front. “You didn’t take that hit for a clone.”

“Oh,” San said. As always, the dryness in his tone came through perfectly well despite the weird echo his voice took on whenever he bothered to channel sound to the outside world through (or was it around?) the seals in her rings. “So that’s what all this has been about.”

“Shut up,” Rin said, at the same exact time that Kakashi growled it. After that, it was much less awkward to just sit there in silence and pretend this was just like one of those times they needed to patch each other up after a botched spar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that while I've made an effort to have vaguely canon-like geography in this, distances, exact locations and town names etc are all basically according to the rule of cool, seems sensible, and sounds right. The map I'm going off of most is [the one featured here](https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/8750/how-many-nations-are-there-in-the-naruto-universe), even though it, like pretty much any fan-made map, is probably also wrong. Let me know if anything seems off or confusing, and I'll do my best to fix ( *︾▽︾)


	18. Love, love, love (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Technically, it's neither Kakashi nor Obito that starts the pivotal argument. It's both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TIL Hashirama may not have needed food or water to survive. People with his clone stuff attached didn't. I'm uh, I'm just going to ignore/downplay this bit of canon for this story >.>

### (Rin, still fourteen and a bit years old)

“Whoa,” was the first thing Obito said, upon reappearing under the canopy formed by their extra tent. “I knew you’d cheat on me eventually, Bakashi, but this? I was gone for what, an— _hey_!”

A hot burst of satisfaction roiled through Rin when she heard that last, indignant exclamation, even though the scalpel she’d hurled in his direction had only ended up stuck in one of his infernal vines. “An hour? A whole fucking hour, and the first thing out of your mouth is a joke?”

“It’s market day! What did you want me to do, just appear in someone’s stall and give them a heart attack? I had to walk _some_ of the way in, you know!”

Rin, restrained both by Kakashi’s tight grip on her uninjured shoulder, and by the insistent grumbling of her belly once she smelled the scent wafting from the stack of bamboo steamers Obito was carrying, somehow found it within herself to draw in a deep breath and let go. For now. “You really only went to the market?”

“Yep! I even found some decent fruit!” Swaggering forward, Obito set down the steamer stack just inside the mouth of the cave with an exaggerated flourish, followed by an actually flourish-worthy paper bag loaded with peaches and apricots. “Nobles in-town are sick of what’s in season right now, so it was all really cheap.”

 _Just whose husband are you actually supposed to be?_ Rin couldn’t help but think, on seeing the blatant ‘praise me’ glance he was giving her. “Not bad,” she found herself saying anyway, because apricots _were_ one of her favourites, and if she didn’t say at least a little something, she was one hundred percent sure he would sulk. “Did you get side dishes as well? I’m pretty sure we ate the last of our onigiri during the run.”

“C’mon, who’re you talking to?” Obito ducked a bit, his vines snatching up the food for him as he shuffled into the cave. “There’s rice, there’s fish for my cheating husband—”

“Oi.”

“—spinach shiraae, and some tofu and bean sprouts.” The stack went down on the bedroll Rin was sitting on, followed by the fruit bag and a third one Obito unsealed from the mark on his belt. “Sounds delicious, right?”

“Right, right, you did sooo well,” Rin muttered, tensing a little as the silent, definitely annoyed Kakashi began peeling off the old bandage on the still tender exit wound on her shoulder. “Feed me some?”

“What? Feed my husband’s _mistress_? What do you want first?”

“Call me that one more time,” Kakashi said, in the too-calm tone that portended disaster, “and you will definitely regret it.” And then, after a brief, tense silence settled around them, he added: “You know she always wants the gyoza first.”

“Hm.” The cool, dim interior of the cave no longer felt pleasantly comfortable. The small, whispery scrape of the top level of the steamer being opened only served to highlight that. “Here, Rin.”

“Mmph—mmm. Ahem. One more…?” Obito, smiling tightly, picked out another fat dumpling with the chopsticks and offered it to her. “Mhm. Mmm. Thanks.”

“Did you even chew them at all?” Kakashi sounded only mildly scandalized, used as he was—as indeed, they all were—to the fact that San’s continued presence had made certain changes to the internal structure of Rin’s throat and jawline. The first time she’d swallowed a decent-sized onigiri without noticing or choking had scared them all, but that had been more than a year ago. “Hold still.”

“One more gyoza?” Obito said, acting as if Kakashi hadn’t said anything. “Open up, okay?”

Rin, caught between two different order-like suggestions, dearly wished that whatever evil spirit had caused her friends to quickly get together and then just as quickly splinter apart could give her and them a goddamn break. It had been nearly half a fucking year and they were still…

 _Fighting over your attention?_ San said, an annoyingly familiar sly tone colouring his inner voice. _Come on, I know you hate to admit it, but that **is** what this looks like._

 _Not the way you said it,_ Rin shot back, midway through her usual shitty attempt at compromise: accept the gyoza, all while holding as still as possible. _It has to be more of a friend thing. You know, like they’re fighting over whose side I’m supposed to take._

“Another one?” Obito said, warmly. “I know you’re still hungry.”

“You go ahead,” Rin hurried to say. “Kaka-kun’s almost done anyway. Right?”

“Right,” was Kakashi’s low, muttered response. “Just a couple more minutes.” And then he made what felt like the world’s most exaggerated production of taping down the new bandage on her shoulder while avoiding so much as brushing the edge of her breast band, when tugging it down in the back would have made things much easier. “Sorry, Rin, could you shift that so I can try to adjust this?”

 _Shift it on your own,_ Rin somehow managed not to say. _You weren’t anywhere near this precious when you were working on the entry wound, you fucking hypocrite._

“I’ll help,” Obito said, brightly, his one eye staring daggers over her shoulder at Kakashi. “Rin-Rin won’t mind, right?”

“She didn’t ask for your fucking—”

“ _Enough_ ,” Rin bit out, only just managing not to let San’s chakra leak into her voice. “Just… this?” She waved wildly between them. “This, this competition-level grudge you guys are holding over each other’s heads? This ends right now.”

Behind her, Kakashi sniffed. “I’m not the one holding a grudge.”

“And _I’m_ surprised you managed to tell such a lie without your big fat head exploding—”

“Both of you, shut up!” Fuming, Rin could only manage to tamp down on her rage by reaching out, snatching the chopsticks still dangling from Obito’s loose grip, and chomping down fiercely on two gyoza at once. “Mmph. How on earth you managed to end up doing each other—”

“That didn’t. Happen.”

“Bullshit it didn’t!” Obito started to surge to his feet, only to stop with a muffled curse as he very nearly knocked his head against the low, irregular cave ceiling. “You!! You really want me to say it?” His towering fury somehow didn’t manage to lose any of its power even though he was snarling out each word while still awkwardly propped up on one knee. “Have you already forgot just who pushed me down that night? _Huh?_ ”

“Who the fuck set the whole thing up from the start?” The sheer amount of rage in Kakashi’s voice as he too rose to his knees was enough that Rin went still, unable to help glancing in his dogs’ direction. That they were all wide-eyed after hearing him worried her, since even the usually impassive Guruko had paused mid-chew of a stolen chunk of fried fish to gape in his direction. “Who’s the one forgetting things here, you little—”

“Let’s try this again,” Rin said, her voice ringing with San’s power. “You, and you, sit down. Obito, humour me with a short description of precisely what happened. Kakashi, wait your turn.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Rin was doing her best not to give into the powerful urge to bash her friends’ heads in. _They’re teenagers,_ she kept on telling herself. Obito having had his fifteenth birthday earlier this year didn’t put him all that far ahead of Kakashi, who’d turned fourteen late last year, but had always managed to look down on everyone in his age range as if he had at least ten years on them. _Stupid misunderstandings are your bread and butter at this age, right?_

But this one felt different. Maybe because it’d been dragging on for almost six months, or because both Kakashi and Obito were very clearly leaving something out of their semi-identical stories about the one time Rin had caught them together at the ryokan in Ichinohe. “So, let me get this straight,” Rin said, reaching up to massage the point between her eyebrows, “you guys weren’t really together to begin with, just sometimes fooling around?”

“Yes.” Kakashi. “Exactly.” Obito. Both of them sounded earnest, sounded very sure of what they were confirming, as if that declaration somehow made their six-month quarrel make perfect sense in retrospect.

“And that night, after I walked in on you by mistake,” Rin said, laying emphasis on those last two words (Kakashi had insinuated something about Obito planning even that, so she felt it was necessary), “you guys ended up doing… stuff. And Obito, you didn’t really agree even though you went along with it, and Kakashi, you were upset because even though _you_ took the lead after I left, you were only touching Obito when I came in because he asked for it…?”

“ _Yes_.”

“ _Exactly_.”

Rin closed her eyes, trying valiantly to ignore San’s quiet, restrained chuckling in her mind. “Did it occur to either of you that you could just apologize?” She didn’t know why she was asking when it was all too clear that it hadn’t. That both of them had somehow spontaneously decided that one night could never be forgiven or forgotten. “Just… look.” She really hadn’t wanted to lecture them initially, but this seemed increasingly like the sort of thing that wouldn’t be resolved without one. “You guys are aware that when it’s two men together, the one receiving has to be properly—”

“What the, I didn’t, I didn’t _receive_!” Obito, now so red in the face that he looked like he could keel over from stress at any moment. “Why would you assume—”

“Why the hell would _I_ ever want to, to put—to do _that_ , to _him_ , when—”

Hearing that, could she at least assume that they had some inkling of how things were supposed to go between men? The night it had happened was long enough ago that even though she didn’t remember one of them limping or wincing afterwards, she wasn’t all that confident of her memory.

 _ **I** remember,_ San said, dryly. _They wouldn’t talk to each other, but neither of them were… ahem._

 _That could just mean one of them had enough sense to soothe themselves with medical chakra,_ Rin retorted, feeling a weird mix of regret and helplessness at the thought that something she’d been so painfully eager to improve their skill in had ended up being largely used by them to hide their injuries from her.

“…don’t believe him, right?” Kakashi was saying, in a low, strangled tone. “I, it’s true I held him down, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t _hard_. He could have—”

“But he didn’t, right?” Rin looked from Kakashi’s blank, but definitely shocked expression to Obito’s flushing, thoroughly mortified face, telling herself again that hey, fourteen. And that it was probably lucky that nothing had blown up like this between her friends until now. “And even at the time, it was obvious it wasn’t entirely because he was into it, right?” That was what the current, throbbing tension in both their chakra signatures hinted to her, but she could always be wrong. “Guys?”

Kakashi, busy doing an impression of having turned into stone, said nothing. Obito, still red, wound up being the first to speak. “In his defence,” he mumbled, each word sounding as if it were being dragged from him, “I didn’t really… I didn’t say anything, while…”

 _The partner taking on the active sexual role bears more responsibility,_ Rin could almost hear a stern, nameless older voice saying. A man, she was almost sure. A man whose—lessons? Sessions? Were known to be infinitely embarrassing, given the subject matter and the staid, yet perilously earnest old man in charge of expanding on it. Rin didn’t know how the hell that guy had ever managed to keep a straight face while saying something like that so seriously.

“Look, when you’re the one doing… things,” Rin somehow managed to say, “it’s important to pay attention to, you know, whoever you’re—”

“I get it,” Kakashi said, his tone brittle, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. “It’s disgusting, and I shouldn’t have—it shouldn’t have happened.”

Rin’s mouth dropped open on its own. “No one, no one’s calling it—”

“Is that your favourite fucking word?” Obito hissed. “Disgusting? You weren’t the only one feeling it! You _know_ that, and yet you still just—”

“Hey,” Rin said, waving her hands at him. “Calm down, okay? Rin-Rin doesn’t think he meant it like that.”

“How the hell would you know? He acts, that night, after he finished, he acted like _I_ forced him, like it was my fault we both finished all over the sheets! He’s _always_ like this!” Obito, in his fury, couldn’t seem to help gesticulating wildly as he shuffled on his knees towards the cave entrance, only missing knocking into the cooling bamboo steamers by a hair. “He’s doing it right now, okay? Oh, poor me, I’m so _disgusting_ , wanting anything is _disgusting_ —”

“Stop putting words in my fucking mouth,” Kakashi spat. “I said ‘it’ okay? _It_. Not me.”

“Don’t even try to fucking pretend there wasn’t any other meaning! I’m not so stupid that I can’t—”

“Can you both just stop?” Rin growled. At this rate, they’d be arguing for the next ten minutes. “Stop! I mean it, just sit, sit down, both of you, and shut up!” Obito growled back, but threw himself down onto the bedroll nearest to the entrance. Kakashi flinched away from her urging hand, pointedly moving to sit on the bedroll at the back of the cave, the one furthest away from the one Obito had chosen. “Look. Obito, you know he has a point.”

“He’s called me disgusting before,” was the low, shaky answer. Despite how well she knew Obito, Rin couldn’t tell from his stormy chakra or his deliberately turned-away face just what he was currently feeling. “I’m not lying.”

“Do you really want to go into what you were doing when I called you that?” Kakashi’s voice was just as shaky, but his emotion was far more obvious. He wasn’t hunched over the way Obito was; his back was ramrod straight. His face was blank, but his tightly clutched fists were still very much in evidence, one slung over his upright knee, and one pressed against the edge of the bedroll. “You want me to say it?”

Obito’s signature boiled. “Say whatever you fucking want.”

Rin closed her eyes, telling herself that if this kind of thing wouldn’t be solved by their hitting each other, letting them continue lashing out at each other with words was definitely also no good. “You guys, this isn’t—”

“He masturbates after your massages,” Kakashi blurted out. Then, when Rin turned to glare at him, he added: “ _Right_ after you finish, okay? Every time.”

Rin, opening and closing her mouth, her inner thoughts overwhelmed by San’s barely suppressed, near-hysterical laughter, could only stare at Kakashi’s earnest, offended expression for a moment. The next moment found her looking at Obito’s hunched, quivering back. “Okay,” she managed to say. “That’s. Uh. Rin-Rin never noticed.”

Then, when she realized that Kakashi was still watching her expectantly, she couldn’t help but say: “Is that it?”

“That… I, I’m certain,” Kakashi said, clearly aware that something about what he said had misfired, but also clearly uncertain as to what, “he’s said, I mean, he’s made it obvious, that, that he thinks of you, while…”

“And?” It was with great restraint that Rin didn’t rise up to her feet, rush out of the cave and roar at the heavens, her near-unintelligible words something along the lines of ‘ _this_ is why we’re letting the food go cold? _This_? _Really??_ ’ “It’s none of Rin-Rin’s business what either of you think about while you do that,” she said, instead, “unless you make it Rin-Rin’s business.”

“But he…”

“How about this,” Rin said, desperate to put an end to this thorny, embarrassing, _stupid_ extension to her friends’ increasingly petty-seeming argument. “From now on, we all do it separately. Masturbate, I mean. How’s that?”

Silence set in around them all again, the most awkward one yet. San was almost sobbing with laughter now, and even though Rin could sort of see why, she still resented him for it. She’d thought—okay, okay, she’d _hoped_ things like this wouldn’t need to be argued out. She’d felt a bit left out, actually, the first time she’d come in from watch still stealthed, wanting to refill her canteen from the rain barrel without waking them up, only to hear them sniping at each other in low, rough whispers while going at it.

Rin had turned around and all but fled, annoyed with herself for never having cottoned on that there was a reason they didn’t fight her for the easiest stretch of watch. The fact that she’d sometimes made a clone to keep an eye out while she brought herself off hadn’t made her feel any less excluded. She’d felt so guilty about how often she did that, all while the two of them were just, just—

“That sounds fine,” Obito said, hoarsely. “Doing it alone sounds _perfect_.”

Kakashi, on the other hand, was now staring at her as if she’d gone crazy. “You… _You_ do that?”

“Yes…?”

“But you’re, Rin, you’re not…”

Rin knew nothing good would come of probing into just what he thought she was not, but she couldn’t help herself. “I’m not what? Whatever you’re thinking about Rin-Rin, you’d better say it clearly.”

Kakashi couldn’t hold her hard gaze for more than an instant. As his uncertain gaze lowered to the floor, he lifted a hand to his neck the way he still hadn’t quite stopped doing when he was embarrassed.

He wore his mask only when they were on the job, mostly to guard against being overwhelmed with scents at the wrong time, but it wasn’t uncommon for him to use it as an easy way to conceal his expression. Right now, even within the dim confines of the cave, it was all too clear that Kakashi was blushing as much as he ever did, a slight but noticeable pinking of his lightly stubbly cheeks.

“It’s,” he said, his mouth barely moving, “alone is, is fine.”

“Oh?” Obito said, scornfully, shifting around so he wasn’t giving them both his back anymore. Well, Rin said both, but it was more like he was facing her and the food now, with his side pointedly presented to Kakashi. “I’d better not ever catch you doing anything in camp near me.”

“Who the hell ever would?” Kakashi snapped, glaring in Obito’s direction. “Shouldn’t it be me saying that kind of thing to you, you stupid—”

“So help me,” Rin snapped, annoyed almost to the point of gnashing her teeth, “if Rin-Rin ever comes back to find you two _morons_ doing anything together, you’ll both be hearing about it till you die!” Fuming, she picked up the bamboo steamer and snatched one of the lower, hopefully still warm tiers. “What is it, you’re worried you’ll lose to each other if you’re the first to let this stupid shit go? Huh?”

“That’s…”

“ _I’m_ not—”

“Oh, come on, isn’t that exactly what’s going on?” A moment of hunting through the third paper bag Obito had brought along yielded an unused pair of chopsticks, one she broke apart with a crisp, satisfying snap. She didn’t know what she’d done with the first pair Obito had used for her. She didn’t want to _be here_ , officiating the world’s most pointless fucking competition. “Just what are you thinking, that Rin-Rin’ll jump all over herself to fawn on whoever wins?”

Silence greeted her snide, offhand comment, a cringingly tense one that made it quite clear to Rin that San’s sly murmurings about just what the boys were competing for had been dead on target. Snarling under her breath, Rin somehow managed not to snap the new chopsticks in half. She ate instead of lashing out, chewing and swallowing mechanically, half her mind gibbering _why now_ and _are they seriously…??_ and _what do I **do**_ while the other half sighed over how these delicious gyoza had been the real casualty of this moronic argument.

Rin had been hoping to savour each one, but right now, with the emotion howling through her, she knew that it was only a matter of time before she gave in and punched them both. So she ate and ate and ate and smacked down the now-empty bamboo tier and wiped her mouth with a trembling hand, then put the used chopsticks into the tier. “Rin-Rin isn’t some doll you can win if you play the game well enough,” she said. “The only way Rin-Rin will ever end up with either of you morons is if Rin-Rin decides she wants you both.”

Ume-chan, the only one of her Here friends that Rin had ever had time to discuss these things with, had always held out a threesome as the proper solution to a love triangle, a view Rin had always thought to be kind of all-or-nothing. Not to mention seriously unrealistic, given the way Umeko always giggled as she said it, as if she knew just how scandalous she was being. Even if Rin had somehow failed to notice that it was expected for a woman to end up with one guy here (always a guy, of course, as if no other options existed), the last year and a half of sidelong, demeaning glances when she went on the job with her friends while clearly presenting as a girl would have clued her in real quick.

 _They’ll hold it against me forever if I choose just one,_ she thought, bitterly. _Fuck, the way they’re looking at me now, even choosing the both of them won’t be the end of it. They’ll always want to know who’s **better**._

“Whether you make up or not is up to you,” Rin said, redirecting her angry glare towards the bag of fruit. A moment’s hesitation had her picking out a precise third of what was in the bag, sealing away her choices as she went. “The next time Rin-Rin thinks you’re fighting over this bullshit again, Rin-Rin will seal away your voices for the rest of the day and call it good. Understand?”

She didn’t wait for them to nod, simply rising to her feet and hunching over for the few steps that took her to the side of the dogs’ conspicuously quiet bedroll under the canopy. “Anyone want to stand watch with me?” She wasn’t at all surprised that that question started a rapid-fire exchange of meaningful looks, snuffles and coughs. She _was_ surprised that said exchange ended in Akino, Guruko, Urushi and Uhei quietly volunteering to go. “For anyone that wants to know, my clone will be on watch while I sleep. Good night.”

She’d grabbed the only unoccupied bedroll in passing, careful to shift the bag with the side dishes off of it first, so she didn’t even have to look back. Silence followed her out of their camp, silence and the subdued signatures of four ninken.

 _No way I’m crying over this,_ Rin thought. _Those morons don’t get to make me sad over this, this **crap**._ But once she had set up her bedroll in a small, dusty hollow in the plateau wall and settled down with Uhei buried in her arms, she couldn’t help but close her eyes and sniffle quietly against his fur.

“You’re fourteen too, you know,” San murmured, his distorted voice sounding oddly loud. Probably had something to do with the shape of the overhanging rock. “There’s nothing wrong with being upset.”

_But I’m not, I’m not really…_

_Your body’s age has an effect,_ San retorted. _You’re not drowning in any less of a hormone cocktail than they are. You’re allowed to be upset._

As always, there was the unspoken corollary that from his perspective, she wasn’t all that much older than her friends, no matter what measure they used. And of course, the fact that her former experience in dealing with these kinds of messy interpersonal issues had been a whole lot more theoretical than she would have liked.

“Things will get better eventually,” San said, his chakra pressing close. “You won’t always be so lonely. We’ll find someone for you, I promise. Someone really nice. Okay?”

“Hmph,” Rin said, wiping at her eyes. “Rin-Rin doesn’t need anyone’s help with that.” The offer was still inexplicably cheering. ‘We’, huh, ‘we’ meaning a bijuu who was usually only ever half a mile away from her at most, and, what, the quieter half of Kakashi’s ninken, who were probably secretly hoping she’d choose him so he’d stop being a total killjoy? “Alright, watch time. _Kage bunshin no jutsu_!”

Falling asleep while her clone stroked her hair was never not going to be the weirdest thing she found comfortable. Sometimes, Rin wondered just what would have become of her if she’d never pushed to learn that jutsu, arguing that her chakra control made it so that it was actually _less_ dangerous for her to try…


	19. Love, love, love (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin tries to jump-start a reconciliation between the boys in a somewhat counterproductive way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where you finally find out how their demon disguises look. Prepare yourself for the most emo look ever, okay~~
> 
> Also, sliiight cliffhanger at the end of this one.

### (Rin, extremely fourteen)

Dawn found Rin in an even worse mood than when she’d fallen asleep, half because Obito was the one to wake her (usually it was Kakashi), and half because Obito was tense enough to snap.

Not battle-tense, because these days, Obito was always the most relaxed one of them when it came to it, rightfully confident in the ability of his stupid Sharingan cheat to get him out of anything. Obito only looked this tense after there’d been an argument, one with nasty words and insults aplenty.

“What?” Rin couldn’t help but say, immediately. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” was the calm, almost careless answer. She didn’t know how he managed that, how he could sound like he was one word from breaking into a smile when his chakra was one silent snarl. “You don’t mind if I squeeze in with you guys, right? You can just go back to sleep.”

“I mind,” Rin’s clone muttered, only to flinch when Rin nudged it hard in the side beneath the blanket covering them both. “What? We can’t all fit on—hey!” The clone flailed a little as it was summarily dragged to its feet and shoved forward out of the hollow. “What, I stand watch for you and all I get is being kicked out to stand in the baking sun?”

Rolling her eyes, Rin dismissed the clone with a quick twitch of her fingers, then returned her gaze to Obito’s slightly less tense form. “Come on,” she said, shifting carefully, patting the spot Rin-Rin had just been forcefully evacuated from. “Come sit.”

Obito didn’t have to be asked twice, a bad sign. He didn’t fidget after he picked his way in and sat down, a worse one. When Rin tentatively reached out and put her arm around his shoulders, he just sat there and took it, instead of going through his usual awkward squirming before ‘reluctantly’ settling in. “I know what you’re thinking,” he murmured, without looking at her. “You think he said something, something really… And, and that’s why I’m…”

“Are you going to tell me that’s _not_ what happened?” Rin didn’t think she’d ever heard Obito sound like this for more than a minute. She couldn’t help but lean forward a little, striving to see more of his face, wishing he didn’t have the sensible habit of making sure to sit down while placing his friends on his blind side. His happy-go-lucky mask was stronger on that side, harder to see past. “Obi? Obi-kun?”

Rin was on the verge of breaking out her sweetest, wheedliest tone when she felt Obito shift towards her, leaning his head on her shoulder. It was all she could do not to freeze. “Wow,” she heard herself say, her tone still mostly normal. “It was that bad?”

“He made me cry,” Obito said, so lightly, so, so _carelessly_ that before Rin knew it, she was struggling to rise to her feet, pulling against Obito’s sudden dead weight. “Rin, Rin, don’t, okay? I was joking. Seriously, don’t—”

“Well, it’s not fucking funny!” Rin couldn’t couldn’t see any of the worn parchment strips they reused for their standard sound-dampening seals on the walls of the hollow, so she kept her voice to a low, angry hiss just in case. “We’re teammates, for fuck’s sake! He’s supposed to treat you well!”

“I was joking!”

“Yeah, but how much of it was one?” She didn’t care that Urushi and Uhei were giving her reproachful looks for the shifting and scuffling jarring them on the bedroll; it seemed incredibly important to win here, to tear her way out of Obito’s panicky grip and stalk back to camp and fix this. “You think I don’t know how to read you, after all this time?”

“For the last time,” Obito snarled, “I. Was. _Joking_.” In the end, he had to cheat with his vines to wrestle her back down to her knees, ignoring Akino’s affronted yelp as one of the helpful vines ended up pinning the poor dog against the wall. “Give me some fucking credit!”

“Why won’t you say what he told you, then, huh?” Rin hated how her voice was cracking now, but she couldn’t seem to stop it. It was like the situation with his stupid vines; just when she thought her voice was back under control, another waver would sneak its way in. “Why won’t you just tell me?”

“Why the hell do you—do you know how fucking gullible you are?” Now, Obito’s hands were on her shoulders, and the last bit of cheerful carelessness was long gone. “He didn’t make me cry! He didn’t even manage to make me think of crying! Sure, I wanted to peel his fucking skin off for a minute, but that happens. That’s just how we _are_.” His tone was thick with frustration, but Rin couldn’t tell whether it was from dealing with Kakashi or from the fact that his act had failed with her. “You really want to know what he said?”

“Yes! Obviously!” It was at times like this when Rin sorely missed the half-year or so when she’d been able to look down her nose at Kakashi and Obito both. Or, if she was being honest, at Kakashi; Obito had always been only an inch behind her in height back then. Nowadays, he had an easy head or so on her, and it couldn’t help but annoy her a little whenever she had to look up to meet his eye. “ _Well?_ ”

“Uh,” Obito said, his mouth working, his left hand twitching convulsively around her shoulder, his right hand squeezing her other shoulder a little too tight. “That—he, uh—”

 _Oh gods,_ San thought, his tone of voice sounding strangely choked. **_Teenagers._**

Suddenly, it occurred to Rin that Obito mightn’t be that red in the face simply because he’d just been struggling to keep her here. It was a moment’s work for her to stifle her own, sympathetic flush with chakra, something she did because she wasn’t the teenager here, and it was only right that one of them try to keep their head cool. “So? You were saying?” That of course didn’t mean she couldn’t tease him a little bit, in revenge for calling her gullible _and_ for imprisoning both her legs in his vines up to her thigh. “Spit it out.”

Obito, knowing a losing battle when he saw one, only took another frustrated, open-mouthed minute to relinquish his hold on her. “He, uh. Bakashi said, he said I was, that I’m always—that I like playing the victim with you.”

“And you agreed?”

“It’s not…” The vines holding onto Rin abruptly all withdrew, leaving her fighting the urge to laugh (they tickled!), which she naturally couldn’t, not when Obito still looked so serious, so guilty. “I mean, it’s not like he’s got it completely wrong. It’s that—I always, I like getting your attention.”

Which made San sigh again in the back of her head. “So?” Rin said, out loud. “You have a crush on Rin-Rin, right? That kind of feeling is inevitable.”

Obito looked down at her, his mouth wobbling open, then closed. Then, when she kept on smiling earnestly up at him, he turned an inch away from her, covering his flushed face with one hand. “I hate you,” he mumbled. “How can you be just…”

“What, you think you’ll feel better if I _don’t_ mention it?”

“Yes. _Definitely._ ”

Maybe she was being a little cruel, but with the way he was now glaring at her, having lowered his hand, she couldn’t help herself. “Why?”

“Because—because that way, at least it’s not, at least I’m not always thinking about how I have a ‘chance’,” Obito said, practically snarling that last word. “Happy?”

“Hmm,” she said, drawing an faint arc in the sandy floor of the hollow with the toe of her boot. She didn’t know whether she was happy, and she’d thought she would, and she hated for one long, useless moment that she couldn’t rely on her own feelings to be clear in this situation. But, at the same time, wasn’t it just typical that he—that they both could like her, and fight not-so-quiet wars over it, and now Obito wanted her to pretend it wasn’t happening at all? “Rin-Rin doesn’t think that’s any kind of reason to stop talking about crushes.”

“Why am I not surprised,” Obito said, settling back down onto the bedroll. “You’re horrible, you know that, right?”

“And you aren’t?” The intrusion of Kakashi’s dry, sneering tone into the hollow chilled the relaxed air within immediately. “Congratulations. You two will be perfect together.”

Suddenly, Obito’s chakra went from simmering to boiling again, even as his expression brightened. “Wow,” he said, turning to face the front of the hollow, where the narrow crack that formed its roof widened just enough that someone could feasibly slip in from there. “So nice of you to finally admit it.”

Four sentences in, Rin could already tell this phase of the conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere good. “Hey, hey,” she said, loudly, tugging dramatically at the shoulder of Obito’s tunic. “Get him down here for me, would you?”

“Why?” Man, Obito was really… Even though he had a fake, mostly passable grin up, his eye was twitching, and there was a vein standing out on the side of his forehead. That stuff he’d said about Kakashi accusing him of liking to play the victim couldn’t have been the only insult, the only way Kakashi had deliberately dug into him, not when a few words from the other boy could get him looking like this. “Let him lurk out there all he wants.”

“I wasn’t lurking,” Kakashi snapped. “I woke up for my watch, only to find you gone, gone instead of waking me up. If I’d known you were here crying to Rin—”

It spoke volumes about his current tunnel vision that it was so easy for Rin to bound up the hollow’s wall, reach out and snatch hold of his gesturing arm before he even knew to flinch away from her. Dragging him down to the crowded floor of the hollow only took a brief, fierce struggle; gravity and Rin’s weight were both against Kakashi, after all. And of course there was the fact that he was very obviously trying not to hurt her, while she didn’t mind at all if he ended up scraping against the rock walls all the way down.

“What the hell?” he squawked. “Why are you—ugh!” She’d been careful to choose the smoothest patch of the wall to shove him up against, but she’d still done it hard enough to knock a bit of the breath out of him. “Why are you—”

“Shut up,” Rin said breathlessly. “Obito, come here.”

“I’m not going to shake hands with him,” Obito said, even as he rose back to his feet, edging his way around the now quite dusty foot of the bedroll. “I don’t want anymore of his bullshit apologies, either, so don’t try and—hey!”

He struggled more when she attempted to shove him against the wall right next to Kakashi, but her surprise attack and the way Kakashi blatantly reached out to grab a handful of the back of his tunic did him in. Naturally, this meant that right after his back smacked into the wall, he turned on Kakashi. Or, at least, he tried to, only to stop short when Rin shoved him back against the wall again with her left hand. “Why won’t you even—”

“I’m only going to say this once,” Rin snarled. “So both of you need to shut up and fucking pay attention, okay? _Okay_?”

Affronted silence was her only answer, that and Obito’s ragged, panting breaths. Then, just as Rin opened her mouth again, Obito glared down at her and beat her to it: “What’s the point of listening when you’re only going to take his side again?”

Somewhere in the back of Rin’s mind, her last shred of restraint died screaming. She yanked hard at the front of Obito’s tunic, dragging him down until his angry face was close enough for what she wanted, and then closer still.

Their first kiss was a hard, uncomfortable mash of her mouth against his. Rin shoved him away by an inch almost immediately, changing her grip so it was on the neck of his tunic. “Open your mouth,” she heard herself say, in a growling, practically enraged undertone that would have alarmed her to hear from anyone else. “Do it.”

Obito’s eye was as round and wide open as she’d ever seen it. That, along with the flabbergasted way his mouth dropped open, made him look unbelievably silly. He didn’t resist her second kiss, their disordered breaths mingling, his tongue clashing clumsily with hers. She bit his lower lip as she withdrew, and was darkly pleased to feel him flinch in shock when she did so.

“Stay where you are,” Rin said to him, even as she turned her attention on the fidgeting form of Kakashi, whose expression was blank and fixed and not quite managing to hide his upset. “I’m not done with you yet.”

Kakashi only stopped glaring daggers down at Rin’s restraining hand on his chest when she tugged him down towards her. He didn’t have to bend in as much as Obito—oh, how he’d hated it the first time it was clear Obito had got an inch taller than him—but bend he did, even as he pointedly turned his face away from hers. “I don’t want your pity.”

“This isn’t about what you want, you moron.” Rin, determined to see her way through this crazy impulse, only hesitated a moment before letting go her grip on Obito so she could seize hold of Kakashi’s stubbled chin as well. “Didn’t Rin-Rin say it before? This is how Rin-Rin wants it.”

Kissing him for the first time was a struggle. He slapped at Obito’s hesitant attempt to help pin him down. He made a serious enough attempt at head-butting her that she was forced to let go of his chin to avoid it, only for the hand he tried to push her away with ending up squarely on her right breast. Kakashi froze then, mortified, and she had him.

A kiss on the cheek, first, because she was starting to think she’d read him all wrong, and any more than that would just get him to stab her. Then, when he didn’t move, a very light, careful brush of her lips against his own.

Kakashi turned his face away again, slightly. His next breath came out as a shuddering sigh, perhaps influenced partly by the way her right hand was now caressing the back of his neck. “Why—”

“Why do you think?” Rin snapped, because by all the gods, if she had to explain this too, when it should have been _perfectly obvious_ —

“I don’t…” Kakashi’s voice was almost too low to be heard. “I mean, with him, you were more…”

“Arrgh!” Alright, that was it, that was officially it. Just how fucking selective was Kakashi’s memory, that he’d remember how fiercely she’d kissed Obito, but not how much he himself had fought to avoid her so-called pity? “A minute ago, you nearly head-butted me, you, you _moron_.” She didn’t know what had possessed her to even think this could work. “Neither of you listen.” She hated them. “Rin-Rin thought if, that showing you…”

Her left hand dropped its long-since weakened grip on the front of Kakashi’s tunic. Rin didn’t know when she’d stopped touching his neck, and she was very, very sure it had been a mistake to let herself do it. That all of this had been a mistake.

Hadn’t she been avoiding this? This tense, breathless, painful silence. Kakashi and Obito had been avoiding it too, in their own hilariously inept way, and she, the second oldest member of the group, the one who should have known better, had been the one to put her foot in it.

* * *

The run to Hisayama was performed in utter silence. Obito took point. San, who had separated from Rin almost immediately after she’d stalked out of the hollow and smothered her in a hug, was bringing up the rear along with the grimly silent Bull and Uhei, who were the only dogs that would be out for this stage of the operation.

(This was perhaps the first time their party could truly pass for a group of demons without making a deliberate effort to do so.)

Pakkun had argued that they had time enough to dye and dry the fur of the whole pack, but Kakashi had only had to look at him to make him trail off into unintelligible grumbles. Bull and Uhei had only been included at all because Uhei had already been dyed for the previous job, and Bull didn’t need to be.

(San’s inclusion as his tall, solid clone self had passed without comment, even when he made a point of painting on a facial tattoo. Usually, if he deigned to participate in a job, he didn’t go that far, secure in the knowledge that his mist genjutsu would prevent everyone other than Obito from seeing him.)

They had not put Kajiwara’s fate to a vote. “We’ll play it by ear,” Rin had said, when Obito very carefully phrased the question. “If he’s got any sense, the most he’ll do is claim he doesn’t know what we’re talking about. You know, a little public posturing, just to make it clear who’s behind the bodies that eventually drop.”

She’d prided herself on the fact that her calm tone didn’t signal how very much she wanted Kajiwara to turn out to be the kind of idiot that gloried in public fights. Killing was killing, after all. She would enjoy doing it no matter how many people got to watch the grisly process.

People on the main road gave their team a wide berth. Obito went first, the slashing lines of his painted-on tattoo working with his grey goggles to make his face entirely unreadable. Kakashi was next, his black scarf pulled up over his nose, his own face paint making it look as if his eyes were bleeding black tears. Bull padded along behind him, a large, threatening shadow; Uhei was snarling, his mottled grey-and-black dye job making him look like a harbinger of plague. And San was wearing a wide, pleasant, unchanging smile that made his tall, broad-shouldered, mostly normal-seeming clone the kind of person even the cockiest nukenin would avoid looking in the eye.

(His face paint was a meticulously applied, ridiculously lazy trio of black lines on one cheek. Nothing anyone said about it had ever been able to convince him to change it.)

Rin had spent a month and a half on tweaking her inborn facial tattoos with San’s amused help, all so that she never had to repaint the glistening, vine-like pattern that covered nearly half her face. When she was feeling whimsical, she added on an extra something: a spot of colour on one cheek, a smudged flower on another.

Today, she’d used a bit of their precious red face paint to draw a blood sword on her left cheek. Which was a bit on the nose, and nothing anyone other than San could possibly recognize, but she’d had nothing else to do with her hands while she pretended she wasn’t watching the boys gear up to go on the hunt, and so it had stayed.

At the town gates, the guards there checked the group’s collective identity a little more thoroughly than usual. When asked where they’d be staying, Rin couldn’t help but smile. “This is a social visit,” she said. “We’ll be staying with friends.”

Something in her tone made the gate guard decide not to question it. He let them into Hisayama with a stiff, formal bow, and gladly returned to the far less life-threatening business of checking the exiting merchants’ manifests.

“Which inn?” Rin said, to Obito. He inclined his head in the vague direction of the eastern half of the market. “Ugh.” The only inn in that direction was really more of a bar with a brothel attached, and neither establishment was of very high quality. The only thing that saved the place from complete undesirability was the fact that most people that frequented it were fiercely in favour of minding their own business. “Well, let’s get this part of it over with.”

Unfortunately, their plan for crass verbal intimidation followed by a change in location for a secret fight went on hold the moment they spotted Kajiwara hunched over beside a man they didn’t know. The building hush in the bar only highlighted the loud, grating voice of the unknown man.

“…isn’t it just two delusional genin brats and their whore? Why’d you spend on five of Ando-san’s thugs when two would’ve done?”

“Hey, Kajiwara-san,” Rin called out, “how much did you spend, exactly?”

Kajiwara’s back straightened to the point of stiffness. “Clearly not enough, huh, Ao-san.”

“Huh?” Kajiwara’s friend slurred, turning unsteadily on his barstool. “Wait, wait, _this_ is one of the little brats you—”

Stupid as it was to escalate things this early, Rin simply couldn’t help herself. A swift shunshin had her right behind the drunken man, her hand closing off his windpipe as she dragged him back, intending to either dump him to the floor or hurl him outside.

Unfortunately for that guy, his first response was to grumble something unintelligible and try and fight back. _Kill him,_ Rin’s instincts urged. _It’ll be faster._ Grimacing, she stunned him with a harsh jolt of lightning chakra and let his body fall at her feet. “You should have taken this guy’s advice, you know,” she said, sweetly. “That way, you’d only have thrown away a third as much on us.”

“Don’t worry, Ao-san,” Kajiwara said, without turning around. “Next time, I’ll spend more carefully.”

“Next time?” Rin said, loudly, affecting genuine confusion. “Who said there’ll be a next time?”

“You never know,” was the undaunted reply. Kajiwara turned just enough that he could look at her over his left shoulder. “Maybe…”

Kajiwara’s eyes widened a little. Rin feinted to the right, entirely on instinct, only to see Kajiwara’s drunken friend punch a hole in the bar counter he’d just been forcefully deprived of. “You _bitch_ —”

She cut off his outstretched lower arm with one slash of her claws. Taking the other was a lot more effort, but not so much more that she had to break a sweat doing it. Then the guy—still shrieking—started forming weird, watery arms out of the blood spurting from his stumps, and Rin decided she was just going to have to go all the way.

By the time she was done with him, the bar was nearly empty. There were three guys between her and Kajiwara, one pair doing their fluid, desperate best to keep Obito from advancing on him while the third one crossed swords with Kakashi.

That swordsman was actually pretty good. Which was probably why Kakashi was dragging out the fight, keeping the guy as much within Obito’s field of vision as was possible. Much as Kakashi liked to mutter that Obito had everything handed to him by his Sharingan, Kakashi was the one that never missed a chance to make sure said Sharingan captured something new.

Rolling her eyes, Rin flexed her slightly aching fists and began to edge around them and their doomed enemies. Kajiwara, his blocky, ordinarily handsome face blank with shock, tried to maintain his current distance from her, only to be betrayed by the existence of bar stools and so forth.

“Look,” Kajiwara said, even as Obito bisected one of his opponents. “This—this misunderstanding is—”

“What was there to misunderstand?” Rin asked. “You sent men after us with a scroll to hold my teammate’s body. You wanted something.”

“I d-didn’t…”

“I really want to know how much he spent,” Rin muttered. “Bakag—I mean, Kuro-kun, could you do the honours?”

“One moment.” Obito, as always, was careful to make sure his remaining opponent bled mostly on the floor and the abandoned table the unlucky guy was skewered against. “Yosh, let’s take a look.”

Catching Kajiwara without the use of Obito’s vines (no Mokuton in public was a rule) or more than a couple of Rin’s clones (even with San out, she had enough chakra for far more, and showing that off was an easy way to stand out too much) was a headache. Kakashi ended up being the one to flash behind him and nail him to the stout wooden doorpost with a careful, merciless thrust. “Huh,” Kakashi said. “Good steel.”

(He’d chosen to use the sword he’d lifted from the corpse of the swordsman he’d finished just moments ago. An unnecessary, but sadly characteristic risk, given Kakashi’s current obsession with picking out the perfect backup weapon.)

“Actually,” San said, stepping delicately in over the threshold of the bar as Kakashi began to drag in the wilted Kajiwara, “can I be the one to do it?”

“Aw, but that’s _my_ job, you can’t just—”

“I don’t care who does it,” Rin said, sharply. “Work it out.” Then, changing back to her default friendly tone for dealing with civilians: “Ah, Fuji-san?” She thought that was the name of the guy that owned the bar, at least. “So sorry for the trouble, we’ll be done really soon, okay? And of course we’ll cover some of your custom for the night, to make up for the disruption.”

Fuji-san, or whoever it was that was bold enough to say something on his behalf: “No trouble, no trouble at all. Let’s j-just say, h-how about I leave the bar to you for the night?”

San, sensible as ever, was already proposing a compromise to the scowling Obito. “…about we handle it together, Kuro-kun? There’s something I want to check.”

Obito, still scowling, had just opened his mouth to either retort or agree when he stopped short, his gaze now pinned on Kajiwara’s limp, wide-eyed form. “He’s—”

“What?” Kakashi said, having already gone still. His question was promptly answered by the way Kajiwara began seizing in his arms. “Fucking…”


	20. Love, love, love (4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After dealing with Kajiwara, Rin, Kakashi and Obito retire to an inn room for a night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo the next chapter will FINALLY be porn! I'm posting this one early because it's done and also why not.
> 
> In this universe, please assume that summoned animals can return to their realm/desummon themselves whenever they want. There's chakra implications (maybe some of the chakra expended to summon them is returned), etiquette considerations (rude to go back without letting your summoner know in advance) and all sorts of other stuff implied (tactics! message carrying). I'm fairly sure this is the way it works in canon too, but a quick look at the wiki didn't say anything about it specifically. 
> 
> And of course, after all this explanation, this will probably come up just once in a throwaway line in this chapter /o\

### (Rin, even more extremely fourteen)

Kajiwara was dead within five minutes of ingesting whatever bullshit poison pill he’d had stashed in his tooth. It still took ten more minutes of sustained, useless effort before either of the boys was willing to accept the disappointing truth.

San simply sighed and ambled over to the swordsman’s corpse to start an unhurried examination. Uhei was already lying down on the doorstep of the bar, his body propped up against Bull’s yawning form.

As for Rin, the moment she saw Kajiwara go utterly limp was the moment the seething, furious part of her brain finally gave way. _That’s it, huh,_ was all she could seem to think. _Looks like it’ll just end like that._

“Come on,” she murmured, elbowing the now furiously scowling Obito in the side. “He’s finished, okay? We might as well wrap this up.”

“I should’ve been faster,” was the low, angry response. “What the hell was he thinking, anyway? For all that he knew, spilling a little could have kept us from killing him.”

“Oh, come on,” Kakashi said. “The guy’s a pro.” Which meant that of course Kajiwara had known he was facing his own death, regardless of what he said or didn’t say. “I didn’t think he’d be the type to bother with suicide pills.”

“Oh gods, he isn’t… you don’t think Kumo would have gone to the trouble of cultivating some kind of, of nukenin spy, do you?” Rin couldn’t help but say. “It would be just our luck if this asshole offed himself because he was scared of something like that coming out.”

“You’re seriously overthinking it,” San said, without looking up from one of Obito’s fallen enemies. “He probably just didn’t want to face whatever he thought you were planning to do to him.”

“Shouldn’t that be whatever _we_ were planning, Mr. ‘let’s steal Kuro’s job’?”

There was something really surreal about hearing that from Obito’s painted slash of a mouth in this kind of situation. (He insisted that dark lipstick added something to the whole look, but Rin thought it was probably just the fact that the face paint they used tasted terrible, and didn’t look right if you avoided your lips while painting on a pattern.) But then, despite how serious Obito was about dressing up to reflect the august, deadly presence of the so-called Shadow Demon, he was never very good at saying things that were in line with the dangerous, too-cool-for-words persona he’d made up to go with his fake name.

The only reason Rin had never said anything to Obito about it was the fact that with his face as it was, and his frequent, careless displays of inhuman strength, it really wasn’t all that hard for him to appear demonic.

As for Kakashi…

“Definitely high-grade steel,” he murmured, even as he eased the sword out of Kajiwara’s limp corpse. “Well sharpened, too.”

Kakashi, as the second most normal looking member of their team, should have been their face, the one person that got nudged to the front to smile calmly at the panicking client. Usually, he was grudgingly dutiful about sharing that task with Rin, which worked just fine right up until said client saw him dealing personally with an assailant. Kakashi’s swift, dispassionate assaults and kills seemed only to unnerve clients even more than anything Obito did, perhaps because Kakashi very naturally went back to his polite, vaguely smiling customer-focused expression afterwards.

Rin would have liked to say it was about contrast. That, well, people were used to expecting callous ruthlessness from someone as heavily scarred as Obito, but didn’t know what to think when the same behaviour surfaced in a nice, normal-looking boy. Unfortunately, that pleasant little theory got hung up on the fact that clients seemed to have that same momentary disjoint when they saw _her_ in action.

That some people looked at her that way, eyes wide with shock, even though they’d already been carefully directing their questions to Kakashi… Most times, that thought made her growl internally or roll her eyes, her mocking mostly reserved for herself. _A decade and a half here, and you **still** haven’t got used to the way being a woman affects everything?_

Today, watching the pained expression of Fuji-san as he laboured to decide whether to work his way towards her or brave the blood-soaked stretch of floor that separated his trembling form from the muttering Kakashi, Rin simply felt tired.

“Kuro-kun, please stop whining and just help San search. Gin-kun, if you could go inform the guards? _Without_ that,” Rin added, at the end, with a pointed look at the stolen sword Kakashi was still clutching. “Claiming anything without official approval is no good. You know that.”

That last bit was more of a covert reminder to the whole team, one that would hopefully jog their brains enough that they’d remember just what kind of impact this town’s authorities could have on their livelihood. Hisayama, though not a major stop on any route, was a well-maintained minor stop on too many to count. And though the town was governed on the surface by a well-connected noble family with ties to the Wind Daimyo, it was also known to be kept in line by a taciturn, moderately competent set of Suna ninja.

Not provoking the guards—or, more importantly, the people the guards would turn to in a serious situation—was a very prudent idea. One Kakashi agreed with, for all that he pulled a face as he reluctantly laid down the sword. “If we do get disposal permission, it’s mine, right?”

Rin didn’t dignify that with an answer. She unsealed a cleaning rag from one of her rings instead, screening with a pretended dip into the kunai pouch on her thigh. “So, Fuji-san,” she said, as she wiped off her hands, not above using a little water-repelling jutsu to encourage the blood not to stick to her, “how much do we owe you?”

* * *

That they weren’t politely escorted out of town was a near thing. Rin couldn’t help but feel both good and bad about having sent Kakashi to the nearest guard station on the group’s behalf, good because she got the sense that the unsmiling guard captain appreciated her attempt at professionalism, and bad because one of the people they’d dropped turned out to be the prodigal son of someone semi-important.

“You understand, of course, Ao-san, that your story about an attack against your group is just that?” the captain said, halfway through his meticulous inspection of the scene. “If incidents like this keep happening, it won’t matter who began the conflict. Your group’s reputation will take a turn you might not prefer.”

In other words, ‘you’d better think twice about showing your face here again if you kill anyone else in my town’. That that likely wouldn’t keep her and her group out of Hisayama was besides the point; having to henge and sneak into town to meet people was a serious drag, especially when in the middle of trying to land a new client or negotiate with an old one. For some people, seeing their prospective caravan escort’s name and face in a bingo book was thrill and assurance both; for others, it was a definite deterrent. The captain hadn’t _said_ his first option would be to go straight to submitting their information to one of the Suna nin he reported to, but Rin could easily imagine him doing so without a qualm.

After that politely stated advice-slash-threat, the captain had little to say to them. The only other point he wished to get across was the fact that Adachi-san—the unknown man whose presence had accelerated everything—was thoroughly estranged from his somewhat influential family, and that as a result, his already ignominious death probably wouldn’t be questioned very closely. “That’s my guess, at least,” the captain said. “You never know with people.”

The swordsman, as far as the captain knew, had either been Adachi’s bodyguard, secret lover, or partner in crime. Further investigation into their ties would be needed to determine the proper fate of the swordsman’s belongings. As such, the sword Kakashi had been unable to keep himself from eyeing throughout the conversation was put thoroughly beyond their reach.

“Bullshit,” Kakashi grumbled, afterwards, but he didn’t say more than that. It was luck that had involved the swordsman in their quarrel with Kajiwara to begin with; had they been prudent enough to start the fight in some other, more private location, it was anyone’s guess whether the swordsman and his high-grade sword would have emerged at all.

* * *

Finding an inn that would admit them after the stir they’d caused wasn’t as difficult a task as Rin had feared. There was a single room available at one of the places they’d stayed in before; a generous tip got them the room and the promise of a hearty dinner. That last point meant their having to split up temporarily, Kakashi sighing as he trudged off to keep a close eye on the food as it was prepared, and Obito carrying the sleepy, massive form of Bull upstairs on his back.

(That was never not going to be weird to watch, even though Rin knew quite well that a little chakra could allow her to do exactly the same thing.)

As soon as they were in the room, Bull began to wriggle out of Obito’s arms. “Boss told us to go back afterwards,” Uhei muttered, even as he looked down his nose at the way Bull made a slow, elaborate production of getting back down onto his own feet. “The room’s crowded enough as it is, so we might as well just go now.”

“Hmgh,” was all Rin could say, too busy stripping out of her slightly blood-spotted tunic to pay more than a minimal amount of attention. “Whatever you like.” She only began to reconsider when the small, muffled noise of the dogs de-summoning themselves sounded one after the other, leaving her half-undressed and alone in a room with the slightly red-faced Obito.

 _I’m not looking,_ he’d used to say, his voice slightly high pitched, the few times that had ever been a concern back when they’d been a newly formed team. She’d trained him out of that as soon as she could, annoyed both by his clumsy attempt at reassurance and by the implication that he thought her the kind of girl that would need to be reassured about that sort of thing.

These days, the only privacy they had from each other was when one of them split off from the main group in order to keep watch. There was only so much you could avoid seeing of each other when you barely even split up for baths, and healing each other’s wounds was sometimes necessary.

This extra consciousness, this acute awareness of the unusually abrupt way Obito turned away when he saw her undressing, _that_ was new. Before, Obito’s scrupulous politeness about this sort of thing had just been funny, especially in contrast to Kakashi, who not only rarely looked away while she was undressing, but would frown if he thought one of her new scars wasn’t healing fast enough.

Now, though, as Rin undid her sweaty breast band, she felt… aware. As if the next thing that happened wasn’t just going to be her pulling on the long, threadbare t-shirt she usually slept in. And then pulling on a pair of loose pants over her ninja shorts because it got too damned cold at night to sleep in shorts the way she usually did, even though it might look a bit…

 _I’ve slept like this before,_ Rin told herself. _There’s no way they’ll start thinking I’m trying to cover up more because of them, or something stupid like that._

“Done yet?” Obito asked, his voice coming from over by the room’s one, small window. “What are we doing for watch, by the way?”

The fact that the wall with the window was the furthest point from the bed Rin was standing by had not escaped her. Neither had the fact that while Obito sounded relaxed, his back was tense, and he was staring out the window like his life depended on it. “San’ll do my watch tonight, and I’ll take the early morning shift,” she said, after a moment. “I’m all done.”

That the thought of taking everything off had strongly occurred to her was something she didn’t want to admit, not because it would be a slightly spiteful, and definitely childish way to needle her friends tonight, but because Rin knew she wouldn’t mean it as only that. _Look at me,_ she’d have thought, as Obito turned around. _Take a nice, long look._

Not having had concrete sexual experience in this life didn’t mean she’d not learned the general, expected script for how an encounter was supposed to go. That the man was the one expected to cajole and entice his partner into getting naked was different; none of the rest of what was involved in crossing that barrier was new to her.

Still, she’d been hesitant about trying anything. Being female and taking the first step had annoying implications here; being an obvious kunoichi was an extra complication. As a result, Rin had always thought she’d do her first time with someone she’d paid, or someone she didn’t need to interact much with afterwards. That way, she wouldn’t have to worry about how best to go about things, and could simply enjoy herself.

Somehow, she doubted that having that extra experience under her belt would have made her feel any less conflicted about the current situation. Said situation being her acute, unwarranted embarrassment about being the first one to get onto the bed.

(Even in her old life, being the first person to lie down could make you look a little too eager. The safest thing was to make sure you both approached the bed at the same time, preferably while thoroughly entangled.)

Obito didn’t say anything as he watched her settle on the far left edge of the bed. He wouldn’t have made any of his silly mistress jokes about this sort of sleeping arrangement even before the recent awkwardness, so his silence wasn’t out of the ordinary. The fact that he was still red in the face as he turned around and began to strip, on the other hand…

Rin didn’t know how to deal with this feeling, this growing urge to touch. Or, well, she knew how she’d been dealing with it up to this point—ignoring it, repressing it, explaining it away—but she didn’t know what she wanted to do with it now. What she would let herself do.

“Wake Rin-Rin up when the food gets here, okay?” Rin said, her voice muffled by the pillow. It was obvious Obito was trying to avoid her gaze. Not looking at him was the right thing to do. There was something seriously wrong with her for being irritated that she couldn’t even look at his back without feeling like a dishonourable old lecher. “Rin-Rin’s a little sleepy.”

Rin wasn’t sleepy, but it served her well enough as an excuse not to talk, to listen to the stupidly tantalizing rustles of Obito getting changed. Somehow, though, by the time he worked up the courage to come over and sit at the foot of the bed, she began to doze off, lulled by the warmth of decent sheets and the presence of someone to keep watch.

Waking from that pleasant daze only felt like a hardship for the two minutes it took for Kakashi to pass her a heavily loaded bowl of spiced millet. That was one of the dishes this inn did well, and just enough motivation for Rin to crawl out from beneath the blankets and sit up to eat.

“Mmm,” Obito said, something like fifteen minutes later, when they’d all three of them gone halfway through the clay pot Kakashi had brought up. “Tell me again why we can’t just live here.”

“Expensive,” Kakashi said, after swallowing. “Always hot.”

“We could live in a nice, cool cave,” Obito retorted. “We’d only come out to kill people and collect our giant stacks of ryo. Give me a better reason.”

“Sunagakure,” Rin said, wiping her mouth. Then, when Obito gave her his best wounded look: “You wanted a better reason.”

Had they been in a border town, or perhaps, just camping out like usual, this would have been the time Obito flopped dramatically down onto his back and gone on at length about his unrealistic plan for razing to the ground whichever hidden village had offended him by existing. But they were in Wind proper, and in a town known to be supervised by ninja, so Obito simply pouted at her and scooped himself one last serving of millet.

It was nice. Normal. It went on being that way for the next few, blessed moments, just the three of them semi-quietly gorging themselves and arguing over who would take over from San for the annoying middle watch.

Naturally, it didn’t last.

At first, as Rin finished brushing her teeth and rinsing out her mouth in the small sink in an alcove near the door, she thought the unspoken cease-fire would hold. She’d gone last to give Kakashi time to change clothes without appearing to do so. She’d dragged it out a bit, just for extra security, thinking that the interpersonal posturing the boys needed would be over by the time she finally couldn’t put off turning around again.

However, the moment she turned back towards the bed, she knew something was wrong, and not just from the boys’ stiff silence. It was the space they’d left between themselves on the bed, the space clearly meant for her.

Gritting her teeth, Rin managed to reel in the urge to say something. The bed was oriented so its foot faced the window and the sides faced the door, and the side closest to the door was always where Rin slept when they were all in the same bed, because they all knew who was best to have between them and anyone that burst in through the door. Obito was usually on the side that faced the window, if there was one. Kakashi went in the middle even though it occasionally made him frown and push himself more than was healthy during spars and drills.

And yet, the moment romance came into question, Rin was suddenly the one everyone agreed should be in the middle. The one being protected.

 _Fuck this,_ she thought, and the only way she managed to walk back towards the bed instead of stomping was the thought of what she would do when she got there. She savoured the growing alarm in Kakashi’s stiff, tense frame, and the corresponding, surface-level relaxation in Obito’s. She especially savoured the way Obito flinched away from her hands when she lifted the blankets and began to shove him towards the middle of the bed.

“Why are you—”

“Because you’re in my spot, you _moron_ ,” Rin hissed, shoving harder. She wanted to hit him. She wanted to tell him to throw away the baggy white t-shirt he was currently wearing, not just because it was hideous, but because the material was thin enough that she could see his nipples through it, and wide-necked enough that she could practically see half his chest. She didn’t really want to lie down beside the two of them anymore, but doing anything other than that would be admitting defeat. “Move over!”

“Okay, okay, fine!” Ugh, now he was starting to go red. “It wasn’t my idea, okay? Kakashi said—”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You _agreed_!” Now Kakashi was sitting up, his angry glare in Obito’s direction somewhat diminished by the fact that he was bare-chested (normal, but not helpful right now) and had done a poorer than usual job of washing off his face paint earlier on. He looked strikingly like what Rin would have expected of a broken-hearted young man in her former life, only instead of a melting, wounded gaze to go with the smudged traces of makeup, Kakashi looked one step from putting his hands around Obito’s neck. “Why do you always have to—”

“Shut up!” Angling her leg over Obito’s struggling form just so she could kick Kakashi in the side was petty, but so very satisfying that she couldn’t help herself. “Rin-Rin doesn’t fucking care whose idea or what the idea even fucking was. Shut up and go to sleep, or so help me—”

“What do you mean, you don’t care?” Now, Kakashi’s burning gaze was directed at her. “This, all this, after what you said, you don’t _care_?”

Alright, now _she_ wanted to strangle _him_. “What’s so fucking special about caring, huh?” She really needed to kick him again, preferably hard enough that his stupid, smug, self-righteous ass fell onto the floor. “You tell me what the fuck caring has ever—let go of me!”

“What, so you can kick me off the fucking bed?”

“Guys—”

“Oh, it won’t be just that. When Rin-Rin gets a hold of you—stay out of it, Obito—Rin-Rin’s going to shove you out the fucking window.”

“Rin, please just—”

“You don’t think I won’t shove you out the window too?” The careful, but thorough block Obito was executing meant that his arms were struggling to restrain hers. It was almost the kind of hug Rin had been craving, and it was infuriating to think that this might be the only way she’d ever get it. “ _Let. Go._ ”

“Don’t strain yourself,” Kakashi said, his shaking hands the only giveaway in his cold, sneering facade as he smoothly stood up from the bed. “I know when I’m not wanted; I’m perfectly capable of leaving without your shitty help.”

“You—!” Obito’s cut-off exclamation came alongside a sudden, startling reduction in the grip he had on her arms, which meant Rin found herself very nearly shoving him off the bed by mistake. “Wait, okay, _wait_! The idea—we only thought—”

Kakashi, midway through angrily dragging on the tunic he’d left on the low table across from the bed, froze for a moment, then whirled back around towards them. “Don’t you fucking—”

“—thought we should try sharing you,” Obito said, his low, sheepish tone almost drowned out by Kakashi’s sputtering. “Not, I mean, not like _that_ , but just…”

Angry, relieved, stupidly inconvenient tears stung Rin’s eyes. _Like **what**?_ she wanted to say. _What are you, ten years old? How do you think this is going to work if you can’t even say the word ‘sex’ in front of me?_ But the tears were a persistent nuisance, and there was a lump in her throat, one that would make all of that pointed teasing come out wrong, and Obito was still sort of hugging her, and it was all too much.

“Is it okay?” Obito asked, his tone worried. “If you don’t really like—”

“It’s fine,” Rin somehow got out. “Don’t worry.” Then added, after a seriously long, awkwardly silent pause: “Get back over here.”

Kakashi, who had already been inching towards them, froze again mid-step. “I…”

“Come to bed.” Rin blinked hard, doing her best to get rid of the tears. When Kakashi didn’t move, she turned more to face him, ignoring the awkward way Obito’s arms lifted from around her shoulders in favour of directing a meaningful look in Kakashi’s direction. “Come here.”

It took what felt like a whole minute for him to nod. It took five more excruciating minutes for Kakashi to make his way back around to the side of the bed he’d originally got up from, during which he visibly dithered over whether to take off the tunic or pull it the rest of the way on. In the end, he paused to tug it all the way into place just before he climbed back in beneath the disordered blankets.

During that time, Rin came to an awkward, unspoken agreement with Obito over who was going in the middle. She still didn’t like it, didn’t think she could get used to lying stiffly between her equally stiff, awkward teammates, but it was that or upset the delicate balance between them.

 _Why is Kakashi’s first reaction always to leave?_ she thought. _Why are they both so—so skittish, so desperately uncertain?_ She didn’t have answers for those depressing questions, not right now. But she couldn’t deny how painfully good it felt to imagine that she would have the opportunity to find out.

“Good night,” Rin murmured, and felt inexplicably cheered by the way her answers were the usual incoherent mumble (Obito, who was always the first to fall asleep) and Kakashi’s low, polite response.


	21. Love, love, love (5)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin, Obito and Kakashi get a little tangled up in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEAR~
> 
> Here's porn to help uh, surely it must help somehow. （≧▽≦）ゝ

### (Rin, Obito and Kakashi, excited)

The next morning was a disaster.

First, it was revealed on waking up that neither of the boys had relieved San for the middle watch. Second, that revelation came when San channelled a small chunk of his chakra back into Rin just a few moments before the sun came up.

Third, when Rin woke, she found herself with Kakashi plastered against her back (normal), and Obito holding his breath as he eased his lower body away from her front. Somehow, the first thing out of her mouth was: “what are you doing?”

“I-I-I’m just…”

“You don’t have to,” Rin mumbled. “Rin-Rin can rub it for you if you really need it.”

“No, t-that’s, I wasn’t _asking_.”

An awkward silence ensued.

Then, clearing his throat, Obito scooted away a little more. “I think I should—”

“Get back here.” The last thing Rin wanted was to let this stupid shyness continue getting in their way. She wasn’t as aroused as Obito obviously was, but it wouldn’t take her long to catch up, and she _wanted_ to touch him, she needed it. The first thing she did when Obito shifted back towards her was to run a hand up beneath the hem of his thin t-shirt, skimming her fingers over his chest. “San’ll take my watch, don’t worry about it.”

Obito didn’t say anything. His eye was fixed on her, needlessly active. He held his breath when her thumb brushed over his right nipple, his lips parting slightly. He flinched when her other hand moved downwards, shaping his erection through the thick cloth of his ninja pants, but when she squeezed him, he thrust forward, pressing himself against her hand.

Behind her, Kakashi shifted in place, restless. He didn’t seem to know what to do with the arm he’d slung over her side in his sleep, much less what to do now that she was quite obviously stroking Obito’s cock. “Should I…?”

“What?” The glance she directed over her shoulder didn’t really tell her much; the room was still dark since their window faced the south, and Kakashi’s muddled gaze dropped away from hers as soon as she met his eyes. “You can touch me too. Or him.” Even through the thick cloth, she felt it when Obito’s cock twitched. “I mean, if he wants it from you, and you don’t mind.”

“I don’t—I don’t want—ngh!” Obito’s low, urgent retort cut off the moment she reached down and tugged on his balls. Or tried, anyway, as best as she could manage through the cloth. “Rin, I want… can I, would you mind if I take these off?”

“Nope,” was the slightly breathless answer. Kakashi’s tentative, trembling hand was on her hip now, his fingers dipping just beneath the waistband of her pants. He hadn’t gone low enough to encounter the waistband of her shorts, but something about the way his fingers slid over her bare skin there was mesmerizing. “Go ahead.”

Obito licked his lips. He inched back just enough that he could shove his pants down to his knees without knocking against her. He hesitated for a moment, his head ducked, before shoving his boxers down as well. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Rin murmured. One of Kakashi’s hands was now rubbing up and down her side, caressing her through the thin cotton of her t-shirt. “Come here.”

Both the boys drew closer when she said that. Kakashi’s hot, unsteady breaths tickled the back of her neck. Obito’s face was pressed against the pillow she was using. When her hand closed over the slick head of his cock, he let out a low, long groan.

“You don’t want to see what Rin-Rin’s doing anymore?” Rin couldn’t help but say, leaning forward, her mouth by his ear. “Come on, looking’s half the fun. Look down.”

“I’ll come if I do that,” Obito said through gritted teeth, his voice muffled by the pillow. “I can’t—ugh, it’s, it’s already…”

Rin bit his ear, unable to help herself. Fuck, it was nice knowing what to do, knowing what to try to get a reaction. Knowing why he whined when she licked her palm and moved her hand back down to stroke him. He moaned when she licked and bit at his ear again. Every time she swept her thumb over the tip of his cock, there was a little more fluid, more evidence of his desire.

Just as Rin was thinking of repositioning so she could see how Obito tasted, he began to shiver, his solid frame going rigid with tension. He moaned again, thrusting hard up into the slick circle of her hand, his cock pulsing. His come splashed all over her hand, the strong, salty stench of it suddenly the only thing she could smell.

“Shit,” Obito slurred. “M’sorry.” Then, a moment later, just as he’d finally stopped hiding his face: “What are you—you can’t _lick it_! That’s too…”

Rin, already partway through lapping up the come from her hand, simply shrugged. “Why? I’m just trying to clean up.” That she was savouring the sourness of the chakra in his come wasn’t something he needed to know. “All done for now, right?”

“You’re crazy,” Obito muttered, though his still-active eye was still fixed on her mouth as she licked up the rest of his come. “I’m done, though. You can do Bakashi now.”

“Does he have to be here while you—while we—” Kakashi’s affronted grumbling cut off when Rin turned around to face him, half because she had a certain look on her face, and half because she immediately reached out and pulled up the hem of his wrinkled tunic enough that she could begin to unbutton his trousers. “Rin, you don’t have to.”

“Rin-Rin really doesn’t know why both of you are so stupid,” Rin couldn’t help but say. “All these years, how many times have you ever seen me doing things I don’t want to do?”

“I’m not…” There was something really satisfying about hearing Kakashi’s increasing breathlessness undermining his usual pretentious tone, the one that screamed ‘I’m always right and you’re always wrong and don’t you ever forget it’. “I’m not the only one that said you don’t… that said you shouldn’t…”

“Is that really the only thing you can think of right now?” Obito said, his half-amused, half-horrified voice sounding louder than usual since he was pressed up right against Rin’s back. “Is she not doing it right?”

“Shut—mmgh—” Cheap as Rin felt for continuing to use kisses and gropes to deflect the boys’ endless arguments, she couldn’t deny that there were certain benefits to doing so. Kakashi moaned into her mouth, and though there wasn’t as much pre-come dribbling from the head of his slim, rock-hard cock, he was starting to thrust into her grip. “Harder.”

Hearing that one, pleading word from him, Rin tightened her grip on him until he began to flinch with every stroke. She could feel Obito’s hands hiking up the hem of her shirt. Kakashi’s cock felt beautifully hard, deliciously warm, and so slick with his pre-come and her spit that she feared he’d slip right out of her hand.

Obito’s warm hands came up to squeeze her breasts. Kakashi’s shaking hands grasped at nothing in one moment, then descended to curl around Rin’s moving wrist hard enough to leave bruises. He wouldn’t let her switch hands so she could wet her palm for him again. He moaned and gasped and shuddered, his cock twitching in her grip, and his first arc of come splashed on her bare stomach.

The rest of it spilled out in far less dramatic spurts, staining her pants and his tunic hem and upper thighs even as his long, drawn-out moans filled the room. Licking it all up was going to be a hassle, but it was one Rin couldn’t bring herself to mind. _I bet his chakra tastes good too,_ she thought, as her free hand wiped up a streak on his stomach and brought it up to her mouth. _Mmm._

“Rin, do you want—I mean, should I, should we do something for you?” Obito’s voice was deliciously hoarse as he asked that, his hands still on her breasts, squeezing gently. “I don’t know what you like, but I’ll, if there’s anything thing you want, we can try…”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Rin purred. “Let me lick all this up first, okay? Then we can get to it.”

It was easier than she expected to get Obito to help with that needless task. She already knew he liked watching it, and she already knew he’d enjoyed getting up close and personal with Kakashi before. He made a face at the first lick, but he seemed to enjoy the blatant excuse to lick her stomach, and he didn’t even need her to suggest that he should help out when she started in on Kakashi.

By then, Rin’s pants and shorts had been kicked to the foot of the bed, and her panties were damp and distorted around the hand she’d shoved down there. She loved the way both of the boys kept watching the slow, steady movements of her hand. She loved the stifled moan Kakashi let out when she pinched his nipples through the cloth of his tunic, when she leaned down to lick at the sticky head of his softened cock. She loved the way Kakashi bit his lip when Obito started sucking at the skin on the inside of his left thigh.

“That’s not—ngh—I don’t, I don’t need…”

“You don’t like it?” was Rin’s low, sly response. “It’s just a little. Rin-Rin’s just trying to clean you up.” Which would have been perfectly true if she didn’t feel how his dick was starting to plump up again, swelling as she licked and sucked it. “Do you want me to stop?”

Kakashi let out a shuddering breath, his hand weakly shoving at Obito’s head. When Obito advanced instead, pushing against that hand until he too had his mouth suspiciously near Kakashi’s half-hard cock, Rin couldn’t help but shove at him too. “Rin-Rin was here first,” she murmured. “Wait your turn.”

Kakashi moaned when she took him into her mouth, his hips lifting restlessly. Rin, too busy swallowing around his thick cock, ignored Obito’s restless shifting across from her. She couldn’t keep herself from pulling off to lick at the head of Kakashi’s cock again and again, desperately eager to taste his leaking precum.

At some point, Obito shifted up to settle half beside, half on top of Kakashi. It took only one quick glance for Rin to realize why Kakashi’s moans and gasps had gotten curiously muffled over the last few minutes; Obito was kissing him hard.

Seeing that, Rin couldn’t help but reach down into her panties again. She felt fevered, jealous despite herself, watching Kakashi groan into Obito’s mouth as he thrust up into nothing. Did they even realize she’d stopped?

Even as she asked herself that, she worked her fingers in and out of her own wetness, soothing her emptiness. She watched Obito stroke a greedy hand down Kakashi’s front, tightening inside at the thought that she was likely about to see that hand close around Kakashi’s stiff, leaking cock.

Instead, Obito paused, his hand patting the air around Kakashi’s groin. Then he pulled his mouth off of Kakashi’s, his confused, slightly unfocused, still-active eye seeking Rin’s. “What’s wrong?”

 _Nothing,_ Rin wanted to purr, before smoothly—and hopefully sexily—diving back in. But when she opened her mouth, nothing came out, and she felt stupidly guilty as Obito’s gaze inevitably went to the place where her fingers had just been hard at work. “Uh—Rin-Rin’s just—”

“Do you want it there?” Obito’s voice was shaky with excitement. “Do you want him to… in there?” He licked his lips. “I can hold him down.”

Rin couldn’t help but stare at his flushed, eager face for a moment, wondering if she’d heard that right. Even as she did so, her mouth half-open, Kakashi elbowed Obito in the stomach—not hard, but just enough to show his displeasure.

“Is that all you think about?” Kakashi hissed. “I _apologized_. Fucking hurry up and let it go.” Then he was sitting up, his serious gaze only lingering on Rin’s bare breasts for a moment before snapping up to her face. “Can I… you’ll wait for me to get a condom, right?”

“Uh, yes…?” _From where?_ Rin desperately wanted to say, only to see Kakashi edging off the bed in the direction of where he’d nearly piled his packs last night. “When the hell did you buy them?”

“Market at Nakayama,” was the low, definitely embarrassed answer. Which meant something like two months ago, when they’d had cause to stop there for a day. They’d all split up for a bit just before stopping to have lunch, Kakashi clearly aiming for another pointless look at the weaponsmith’s over-expensive swords, and Obito muttering something about checking out the latest issue of his favourite manga. Rin had taken the chance to stock up on herbs and buy new underwear and thought nothing of how both the boys had avoided her gaze when they trailed in to their agreed meeting spot a half hour later than they’d said they would be. “What?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Rin said, narrowing her eyes at him in a bid to keep from laughing out loud. “How about the little question of who you were planning to use them with, hmm?”

There was nothing more of a turn-on than the way Kakashi ducked his head then, trying and failing to hide his increasingly flushed face. “It’s not what you fucking think,” he growled. “I just saw them.”

“What, and that meant you just _had_ to buy them, huh?” Obito’s tone was so smug Rin knew he was grinning without even having to look. “Y’know, if I saw them, and I didn’t buy them, even though I’m the guy with the nastiest, dirtiest thoughts on the team—”

“Shut up.”

“—what does that make you? Hmmmm?”

Glaring, his gaze pointedly fixed on Obito instead of anywhere at all near Rin’s seated, nearly naked form, Kakashi finally straightened, a pair of condom packets in one hand. “It makes me responsible,” he said, coolly. “We’re all old enough for this, after all. If we were back in the village, we’d probably already have been dragged somewhere to do it by Jiraiya-sama by now.”

(Kakashi’s respectful-seeming address for Sensei’s sensei was, as always, tainted by the sarcastic way he said the man’s name. He’d only admitted to having met the man when they heard Jiraiya-san being disparaged in passing while on a job in Rivers; Obito had been very disappointed to learn that the man’s perverted reputation was not all wild exaggeration.)

(It did make Rin wonder just how Minato-sensei had turned out so very sensible with that kind of sensei, at least until she remembered how unyielding he’d always been. He’d never been obvious about it, but she could count on one hand the amount of times Minato-sensei had ever led them along on a mission he wasn’t pleased to have accepted, at least not without a direct order or a pressing village need involved. Even an actual demon couldn’t have corrupted him without his say-so.)

“Okay, okay, fine, you’re the most responsible bastard in the world,” Obito said, waving both hands dramatically, even as he scooted in a little closer to Rin’s side. “Hurry up and get over here.” And then, though Rin had half been expecting him to perhaps go back to feeling her up, all he did was sling an arm around her waist, a move Rin didn’t know whether to read as casual or not. “Don’t forget to put one on first.”

Kakashi, midway through stripping off his tunic and stepping out of his trousers, didn’t bother to respond. Something about the careless, arrogant grace of his movements made Rin wonder whether he’d decided to seek out experience before Jiraiya-san could try to push him towards it. She couldn’t help but note that Kakashi seemed, uh, adept at rolling on a condom, something she wouldn’t have expected of the same boy who’d been so scandalized about Obito’s masturbation habits.

“Alright,” Kakashi said. “Let’s start.”

(There was definitely something wrong with Rin finding _that_ sexy. He wasn’t even looking at her as he said it! He sounded like they were about to spar!!)

Two minutes later, Kakashi was on top of her, nestled awkwardly between her thighs, and even as aroused as she was, she was finding it really difficult not to burst into laughter. Like this, he was heavier than she’d thought he’d be (good), but he still wouldn’t look her in the eye (…), and there was a fine tremor running through him as he painstakingly adjusted his cock between them, trying to get it into her without having to reach down and touch.

Obito cleared his throat. “Maybe—”

“ _Shut up!_ ” Kakashi trembled, and his cock slid against her, a tantalizing but definitely accidental tease. “So fucking distracting.”

Rin didn’t know what to do. Stroking Kakashi’s back a moment ago had only made him freeze. She dearly wanted to get on top and take control of the process, but she didn’t know how much he’d like that; during, it’d probably be fine, but after? “Hey,” she found herself saying, “it’s because Rin-Rin’s too wet, right?”

“Uh,” was the low, strangely hoarse answer. “No, it’s fine.”

Blinking, Rin turned her head a little, fruitlessly trying to see more of Kakashi’s face. His head was still lowered over her shoulder, though, so all she could see was a bit of his neck and lower jaw. “Rin-Rin could get on top instead,” she murmured, half out of impatience, half because she was trying to test something. “That way, it’d be easier to see everything and line up properly. Do you want to try it?”

This time, it took two more breathless, teasing strokes before Kakashi responded. “I don’t see why not.” Smoothly, he shifted his weight off her, one careful hand moving to hover at her right hip as he laid down beside her. “Come.”

There he was again, trying to act cool. Or maybe he was just trying to cover for the way his breathing just sped up when Rin deliberately used a quieter version of her usual cutesy tone to ask him what to do. Either way, she’d got what she wanted, and she was going to make the best of it.

“Wait, you’re—ngh!” Kakashi twitched beneath her, his protest cutting off when she guided the slick head of his cock inside her. “Don’t…”

“Is it too much?” Rin said, leaning forward, her head hanging low, one hand on his hard, heaving chest while the other remained curled around the base of his cock. “Is Rin-Rin too tight?”

“Nn… no.” Kakashi’s hands landed on her spread thighs, hesitant, yet clearly reluctant to stop touching. “You can—you can keep going.”

Rin closed her eyes. Rocking back forced a long, low groan from him, as well as a shuddering gasp from Obito. She opened her eyes in the next moment, curious to see what Obito was doing, only to moan herself, shocked by the feverish way he was stroking himself while staring at them. “Slow down,” she said. “You want to do me too, right?”

“I’m just doing it a bit,” Obito said, his voice low and raspy. “Don’t mind me.”

“Yeah,” Kakashi said too, a petulant note in his hoarse voice. “Don’t mind him.” And then he began thrusting up into her, his hands moving to grip her hips, so clearly trying to regain her attention that she found herself hard pressed to keep from rolling her eyes. “Is this how you want it?”

Obito, refusing to be outdone, crept closer, putting his arm around her waist again. This time, he wasn’t content with just letting his hand rest there, or stroking the side of her stomach; this time, he reached up to fondle her breasts, and then, when she let out a whimper, to lean in close and press a hot, wet kiss to her cheek.

Kakashi retaliated by struggling to sit up, one hand clamping her hips to his to make sure they didn’t separate. “Out of the way,” he muttered. “Just wait your f—hgnn—”

That was the last coherent thing he said for a while, because Obito seized the chance to drag him into a kiss, one that Rin naturally followed up with one of her own. It was really easy to keep doing that, keep devouring Kakashi’s panting, half-open mouth whenever it was free. It was even easier to keep grinding down to meet his stuttering, haphazard thrusts.

“Fuck,” Obito gasped, when his hand finally made it all the way down to feel where she and Kakashi were joined. “H-how… Rin, you’re wet. You’re so fucking wet.”

“Nngh,” Rin said, half into Kakashi’s mouth. “That—more, please, _there_ …” Both Kakashi and Obito moved their hands in response, their fingers tangling between her slightly achy thighs, putting pressure in the right place mostly by accident. She had to let go her shaky grip on Kakashi’s shoulder to show them—make them— “ _Anh!_ ”

She arched backward, heedless of Kakashi’s choked groan as she did so. Obito’s greedy hands supported her, pinching her nipples even as he kept her steady and upright, just at the right angle for Kakashi to fuck into. It wasn’t long before she came again, shivering, squeezing down so hard that it stung her inside.

“Look at that,” Obito said, his breaths coming heavy and hot against the side of her face. “Look at how you’ve wrung him dry.” It was only then that Rin realized Kakashi had gone soft inside her, and that he was only managing to keep upright by propping himself up with a hand against the bed beneath them. “Can you do me too? Do you still want mine too?”

“Yes,” Rin rasped. “ _Yes._ Give it to me.”

They ended up halfway on top of Kakashi’s sprawled-out form, Rin on her hands and knees and Obito bending low over her, his fingers dipping into her even as he used his other hand to struggle to roll on the spare condom. “I’ve almost got it,” he kept muttering. “Just a—I’ll, I’ll be just another sec.”

Eventually, Kakashi got tired of huffing impatiently to himself, choosing to shift out from under Rin and go around to take control of things. Which meant Rin ended up rolling onto her back to watch Obito go red as anything while Kakashi forcefully stroked him back to proper hardness and slid on the condom for him. “I’m not going to do this for you every time,” he said, pointedly. “Practice on your own, okay?”

“Fuck off,” was the prompt retort, the venom in it ruined by how breathy Obito’s voice was. Then: “Do you have to fucking watch?”

“You liked watching me, didn’t you?” Kakashi shifted again, flopping down to land beside Rin. “At least _I’m_ not going to be rude and try to tell you how to do it.”

“I didn’t,” Obito mumbled, even as he shuffled forward, his hands gently easing apart Rin’s thighs. “I was just going to make a suggestion.”

“Oh, right, because that’s so different,” Kakashi said, sneering. Then, a moment later: “It’s harder than it looks, isn’t it?”

“Not really.” Obito, though still obviously embarrassed, wasn’t shy at all about fingering her. He stroked her gently, parting the slick, tender lips of her cunt, dipping inside her even as he adjusted his cock until the head was pressing into her. “There, right?”

For answer, Rin rocked up against him, taking in a little more of his thick cock. He’d braced himself lower than Kakashi had done, so he felt much heavier. His groan as he fully seated himself inside her made her shiver.

Kakashi shifted restlessly beside them. “It’s… it’s already in?”

Rin bit her lip, hard. Obito’s eye met hers in that moment, then widened, but a strong, sudden squeeze from her cut off whatever he’d been about to say. “Maybe it’s because Kaka-kun just finished doing Rin-Rin,” she said, in a small, deliberately embarrassed tone. “It’s because Rin-Rin was opened up.”

“Yeah,” Obito said, breathlessly. “It’s really easy to get in right now. Loose.”

“Don’t,” Rin moaned. “Don’t say it like that…”

“Why not?” Obito’s hands moved down beneath her arse, groping her shamelessly. “You can feel it too, right?”

“Don’t _say_ it,” Rin sobbed, turning away from him and Kakashi both, her hands coming up to cover her face. “It’s too—no, don’t—”

That last phrase, at least, was truly meant; by then, Kakashi had leaned in over the both of them, dragging her hands away from her face by force. “You,” he said, through gritted teeth, “you know you’re the worst, right?”

“I—hgn—I don’t know what you— _ow_!” He’d just pinched her nipple, hard, and now Rin could no longer keep back her wicked smile. “Kaka-kun, don’t…”

Glaring, Kakashi leaned in to assault her mouth, biting, plunging his tongue inside. Rin moaned, unable to keep from imagining him doing the same elsewhere, marking her, punishing her. She’d always wanted it, wanted to see how far she could push him. That way, it wouldn’t be so weird when she finally retaliated, when she gave into the urge to hold him down and fuck him until he broke beneath her. “Mmgh—more—”

“Give it to her harder,” Kakashi snarled. “I’ll shut her up.”

“No one asked you to do that,” Obito said, as if he wasn’t already obeying, bracing himself high above Rin as he drove into her with loud, meaty smacks. “Bastard.”

Kakashi was too busy claiming her mouth again to answer. She’d never thought he’d be like this, never thought he’d be this hungry for her. He’d bitten her hard enough to draw blood, and Obito was still _fucking_ her, and she was sobbing a little, breathless and hurting just right, and all she could hear herself saying was an endless repetition of “it’s good”, “it’s so good”, and “fuck me, fuck me harder”.

She was deliciously sore inside by the time they finally stopped. Obito didn’t end up coming again, to his bitter disappointment, something he demanded to try to make up for by kissing his way down her front and licking her cunt for the first time. Then, after both he and Kakashi had had a go at it, Rin finally lay down between them, luxuriating in the feeling of being cuddled and stroked without having even had to ask.

(Kakashi was clingier than Obito just then, perhaps out of guilt over manhandling her. He was the one who pulled her in to rest right against his chest, while Obito grumbled and scooted up close behind her. Rin, smiling, took thorough advantage, letting her hands freely wander Kakashi’s rangy body all while worming her thigh between his.)

(“It’ll get sweaty,” he muttered, but he still didn’t stop her. He didn’t even say anything when Obito’s arm shifted so it was slung over both of them, just let out a brief, annoyed-sounding grunt.)

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ending is slightly abrupt because this was getting wayyy too long. I hope y'all enjoyed the chapter. Next one to come soon ;D


	22. Love, love, love (6)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rin tries not to feel too guilty about the sex-related decline in the group's efficiency.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there!!! Sorry I disappeared for like two months and change, I was traveling and then I was sick. With just the flu or some sort of serious cold, thank goodness, though it still knocked me on my ass for a week plus. 
> 
> Anyway, here's the end of this arc! It's a bit longer than usual because I felt like it >.>. Please enjoy :D

### (Rin, Obito and Kakashi, aching a little)

Two hours later, they were only just getting out of bed. Not because being so close together had fired them up for another round, but rather because the three of them had somehow drifted off back to sleep.

“This…” Rin murmured, as she watched Obito stagger out of bed, “we really can’t do this sort of thing while we’re on a job.”

Obito’s response was a low grunt. Probably agreement.

“Obviously not.” That was Kakashi, doing his best to sound authoritative and somehow just managing to sound petulant and sleepy. “It would be unprofessional.”

“Rin-Rin was thinking more along the lines of it being really distracting, but that too.” Rin was also thinking, while watching Obito root around in his packs and seals, that not doing it with either of them while they were on the job was going to be more difficult than she’d thought. All she could think was that she really wanted to feel up his ass right now, especially when he bent over like that. “We should probably bake in a rest period, you know, between jobs. So we have time to work it out of our systems.”

“Scheduling sounds prudent,” Kakashi muttered. “It should…”

Rin, having glumly dragged herself out of bed, couldn’t help looking back at Kakashi when he failed to finish that sentence. “Hm?”

Kakashi’s gaze dropped down to his blanket-covered lap, and by now, there was enough light in the room to tell that he was going pink.

“Do you know where I put the soap?” Obito said. “I used all the bath stuff last, right?” Only the fact that he was still half bent, half crouched in front of his pack made her certain he wasn’t speaking up on purpose to get the mood back on track. “It’s not anywhere I’ve—oh, come on. How the hell did it get in there?”

Sighing to herself, Rin decided to join Obito in being the mature one, and calmly moving forward in the pursuit of something other than more wild sex. It wasn’t as if she wouldn’t have the chance to prance around in front of Kakashi while undressed in the very near future.

Soon, they were all three of them clean and kitted out as demons again, more than ready to face the day. The fact that Kakashi was jumpy all day and prone to ducking his head whenever he realized Rin was looking at him was neither here nor there; they all still managed to conduct the careful asking-around Rin had planned to do to dredge up information on both Kajiwara and Adachi-san today.

Nothing came up that was out of the ordinary. Kajiwara had apparently been in talks with a bunch of different groups, threatening some and sweet-talking the others. From what they all could tell, he’d been acting like he wasn’t going to go on being a semi-notable but otherwise unremarkable missing-nin; he’d had Plans, though what said Plans had actually been about had been lost with his death.

The few of Kajiwara’s partners or subordinates that hadn’t died with him in that bar were all unsurprisingly unavailable no matter who the Demon Group asked. Which was annoying—part of the point of this had been to track down and remove the asshole who’d given Kajiwara ideas about Obito possessing a doujutsu—but hey, you couldn’t have everything.

Adachi-san was much easier to look into. He had disgruntled bar owners and innkeepers cursing his name nearly everywhere they looked, and shopkeepers grumbling under their breaths about how the hell they’d get back the amounts he had owed. Accepting his custom to the extent they had was due to his estranged family’s influence, and they naturally expected that the process of recovering such debts would be troublesome even if the family was willing to pay. Nobles had a thousand and one ways to put you off in that kind of situation, and while Adachi-san hadn’t been in very deep with any one merchant or business owner, he’d owed a decent amount to a surprising number of people.

“I guess that’s why they wouldn’t let him stay in Watarai,” Obito muttered, halfway through setting up the thoroughly trapped perimeter of their camp. “Imagine how embarrassing it would be, dealing with this shit all the time. Fifty ryo says they tried freezing him out without exiling him first, then got sick of it and drove him out three months later.”

“One month, and you’re on,” was Kakashi’s low, venomous answer. “That he’d just let some sellsword walk off with a genuine Matsuda without even fucking paying for it…”

“ _You’d_ have ‘walked off’ with that sword if I let you,” Rin couldn’t help but say. “And what the hell do you mean, ‘sellsword’, he was good enough you wanted to steal his moves.”

“You don’t carry anything the same grade as a Matsuda if you can’t defend it,” Kakashi retorted. “If I’d stolen it, it’d still be by my side. Gods know what the hell will happen to it now.”

“Stealing it would just have meant more trouble,” Rin muttered. “We’ve stirred up enough in Wind already without that adding to it.” She was worried that, estranged or not, Adachi-san’s family would decide to hold the Demon Group responsible for his death in some lasting, thoroughly inconvenient way. Which was part of why she’d refused to spend more than one night in an inn in Hisayama, even though a three night stay had been baked into their budget for this job. “Alright, whose turn is it to cook again?”

Obito volunteered himself, not surprising considering he’d begged for a half-hour to grocery shop midway through their information gathering trip. It seemed he wanted their second-to-last ‘not on the job yet’ dinner to be memorable; he’d bargained for eggplants and edamame like a thief, and gotten a ludicrous amount of mushrooms thrown in for a pittance, that last being yet another casualty of the nobles’ changing fads. The stall owner had sworn that this was the last time they tried to cash in on imported delicacies, even as they glumly bagged up everything Obito had bought.

Now, as Obito commandeered the stove and the wok, Rin busied herself with the never ending stream of minor tasks that were always an issue when they camped. Airing out their bedrolls would need to wait till tomorrow, but examining the seams and their bedding for tears and stains was easy enough to do now.

She went through the collective sewing-and-repair kit to figure out what they were low on (nothing important, they’d restocked back in Nakayama). She consolidated their three bulging laundry sacks into one large pile, and sealed it back into the chores scroll to be addressed tomorrow. She set up the rain barrel and slowly, steadily filled it with water (because no one ever wanted to have to do that first thing in the morning before their hasty bath) while watching absentmindedly for leaks and damp spots.

“Hey,” Kakashi said, just as she was putting the lid back on the barrel, “shouldn’t the bedrolls all be together?” He was the one that usually ended up assisting whoever was cooking since he had the best knife skills, and that was what he was doing now, all while casting a critical eye at the way Rin had laid things out. “You know, since we’re all sleeping together.”

For the next minute or so, all that could be heard in the camp was the fierce sizzle of the first batch of eggplant frying in the wok, interspersed with the soft sounds of Kakashi chopping up mushrooms.

“Uh,” Rin somehow managed to say, “Rin-Rin forgot?” Which was a lie; she’d considered taking their unsealed bedrolls and laying them side by side for just an instant before inwardly rolling her eyes at herself. _We’re almost on the job anyway,_ she’d thought. _Best to play it safe and go with the usual._ The usual being their pallets laid in a rough circle around the fire pit or the approximate centre of the camp. “I’ll, uh, I’ll move them.”

That Obito just went on frying tempura like it was the last meal he’d ever cook only made her feel more annoyed. It wasn’t the small effort it took getting their bedrolls to line up side by side that was bothering her; it was how fucking stupidly self-conscious Rin felt as she did it. That Kakashi had been able to say ‘sleeping together’ like that, as if he were talking about something perfectly normal, was definitely the highest sort of crime.

_How am I the only one affected?_ Rin grumbled to herself. _Am I just reading too much into what he said?_ She probably was. In her first life, you didn’t lie down right next to someone unless you were planning to fuck them, or they were very close family and there was literally nowhere else to sleep. Battlefield etiquette naturally relaxed that rule, but even then, people tried to end up sleeping next to friends or known unit members, and it wasn’t uncommon for there to be an arm’s length rigidly maintained between your field blanket or pallet and that of the friend next to you.

The culture here was just similar enough that Rin had never thought too much about it, but now, she was wondering what she’d missed. Once she was done reorganizing the bedrolls, she sat back down at the foot of her own and picked up the tunic she’d been half-heartedly patching, forcing herself to finish the task in a bid to distract herself.

She hadn’t planned on—on fucking again, tonight. She’d been thinking that maybe tomorrow morning, they could fool around a bit before they did their chores and prepped for the upcoming escort mission, but now…

“…more than enough eggplant,” Obito was saying, still busy fussing over the pan. “You might as well summon everyone, I don’t want it all getting cold.”

“Got it,” Kakashi said, wiping his hands clean on the cloth hanging over his shoulder. “I’ll just leave this here.” Then he was easing away from the cutting board atop one of the small three-legged stools they used for everything, rising to his feet in a smooth, careless surge that left Rin feeling breathless. “What?”

It wasn’t until Kakashi looked over at her—away from the cutting board he was stooping over for one last, needlessly evaluative look—that Rin realized he’d meant that short, impatient question for her. “Nothing,” she said easily, somehow managing to keep a telltale flush from creeping up her cheeks. “Just thinking.”

It felt like it took forever for Kakashi to snort and look away, and then finally head over to the ninken’s oversized bedroll to start their summons.

_Sometimes, I don’t think I’ll ever understand you humans,_ San muttered, his voice giving her an inward start. _How can you be shy now? Isn’t all the shyness supposed to come **before** the sex instead of after?_

_Shut up,_ was Rin’s sole, merciless answer.

* * *

The tempura was lovely, crisp and golden and juicy, so good with the spicy dipping sauce Obito had whipped up at the last minute that the rice and miso he’d warmed up to go with everything felt a little bland in comparison. Akino tried to argue that he and the rest of the dogs deserved another pan’s worth on the basis of fairness and equality between demonic comrades, only to have his last, zealously guarded chunk of eggplant stolen by Pakkun while he declaimed. Kakashi ended up frying another half batch of tempura out of sympathy, but appropriated almost half of it in the end, serving himself once piece for every one he put in front of his dogs.

Rin, now the first to finish eating most of the time unless she was paying strict attention and taking only normal sized mouthfuls of everything, couldn’t help but smile as she watched the resulting argument. “I don’t see why it’s unfair when _I_ tax you a little, when Obito had more than this to himself,” Kakashi kept saying, even as he slapped away Obito’s tenth attempt to steal a bit from his bowl. “I’m your summoner, you know. You’re the ones being unfair to _me_.”

In the end, when they all finally crawled into their bedrolls, nothing of the stupidly shy, expectant mood Rin had been suffering from earlier was left. Kakashi was huddled in amongst his dogs on the other side of the banked fire, arguing with them in low whispers as he set up to take the first watch. Obito was already asleep, having dozed off in the bedroll in the center while she and Kakashi put away the leftovers and cleared up the dinner things.

_Tomorrow, maybe,_ Rin thought, as she snuggled in beneath her blanket, San’s chakra a heavy, comforting weight to her senses. _I definitely won’t be shy then._

Unfortunately, the next morning, it turned out that she’d spoken too soon. Waking up took her ten more minutes than usual since she’d been up for the middle watch, and her body was always particularly sluggish after getting her sleep interrupted like that. By the time Rin could bear to sit up and open her eyes more than a lazy crack, it was all too obvious that neither of the boys had had any delightfully dirty plans in mind for the morning.

For one thing, Kakashi was towelling off behind the rain barrel, clearly having finished his bath. Obito was frowning at the fire, all of his attention on the pot suspended over it. A more prosaic, wholesome, and determinedly nonsexual picture could not be painted.

“Um,” Rin said, her finger twisting at the inside edge of the blanket covering her lap, “have you both already finished bathing? Because…”

“You can go first,” Obito said, waving vaguely at her. “I might as well finish this. Hey, bastard, heat the water up for her.”

“Fuck off,” Kakashi said, absently, but when Rin turned to look at him, he was already bending back over the barrel, clearly about to fish out and reactivate the heating stone within. “What?”

“Rin-Rin wants to fuck, not take a bath,” Rin found herself saying, petulantly. “When has Rin-Rin ever needed help heating up any fucking water?” That last was more muttered than actually said, and since she was annoyed (and not a little embarrassed about being the only horny one this morning), it wasn’t until she’d crawled out of her bedroll and gone through her first set of morning stretches that she realized both of the boys were staring at her. “ _What_?”

Obito coughed. “You, uh, did you just say that…?”

“Can you not fucking rub it in?” Rin snapped. “Or, more importantly, can you wear something more concealing up top while we’re in camp?” As she straightened up, she waved over in Kakashi’s direction without looking at him, certain that he’d still be bare-chested. “Same goes for you, Kaka-kun. Rin-Rin doesn’t care how hot you feel at night; if Rin-Rin has to suffer in a shirt, so do you.”

“What do you mean, ‘concealing’?” When she looked back at Obito, she was not at all surprised to find him frowning down at his clothed chest. “What isn’t concealed?”

_Nothing is!_ Rin wanted to snarl. _That stupid t-shirt might as well be paper!_ Somehow, she managed to brave Obito’s confused, slightly shy look and say, as evenly as possible: “It’s that I can see a lot through your shirt.” His nipple, his well-defined chest muscles, his tanned, corded neck… “A thicker t-shirt would be better. Something with a high neck.”

“Oh?” Obito said, pinking up a bit. “Then. Uh. Before we, uh, do anything, do you want to eat first?”

“What the hell are you even saying?” Kakashi snapped. “Did you forget we’re supposed to hold back while on a fucking job?”

“But that’s not—we’re not _on_ a job right now, though?”

“Who the hell are you to yell at him, huh?” Rin whipped around to face Kakashi, and sure enough, he was _still_ bare-chested, still probably fucking naked, hiding behind the barrel and glaring down his nose in Obito’s direction. “At least _he_ wears something most of the time. You, just how much do you want us to look at your chest?”

“I don’t! I just bathed, okay? You make it sound like, like I’m _deliberately_ —!” Now, Kakashi was gesticulating jerkily at her, heating stone in hand, flushing all over like the world’s biggest tease. “You—what the hell are you…? Rin, I’m not dressed! Don’t—!”

“Don’t what?” Maybe she’d been taking the wrong tack with Kakashi. Maybe the best thing was to be like this, forceful and shameless enough to walk up to him and drag him close against her. “This?” He was already half-hard, which to Rin was more than enough proof that this was the right way to go. Anything less than what she was doing, one hand around his cock while the other kept him pinned between her and the convenient obstacle of the barrel, would probably just mean Kakashi trying to shrug off his obvious desires. “Can’t we just do a little?”

Kakashi didn’t seem to know what to say to that. His throat moved on something that was neither a gulp nor an attempt to speak; Rin watched an errant drop of water slide down the side of his neck and had to forcibly dispel the thought of stopping it with her tongue. She wanted him to agree, not recoil. She still didn’t know where his line was. She also felt a little concerned about the subtle, but increasingly strong urge she was feeling, one that said to bite and mark and _claim_ first and leave questions for later.

The only thing Kakashi ended up letting out in response to her quiet, coaxing question was a low, choked groan. He was all the way hard now, and leaking all over the palm of her hand, and though he hadn’t started thrusting into her grip yet, there was a tension in the way he was standing in front of her that said he would be doing so very soon. He was naked, too— _I knew it,_ Rin thought, smugly—and so had no defence from her groping, from the greedy hand she was stroking down his back and over the tight curve of his ass.

“Slow down,” Obito said, from his position over by the fire, his voice thin with excitement and impatience both. “Let me finish the rice first, at least.” And because of that bald request, and its strong implication that he wanted to join in, Kakashi was half led, half dragged over to the nearest bedroll and teased unmercifully.

Something about being naked and aroused in front of Rin in this situation seemed to have defanged Kakashi’s usual arrogance. San murmured something about it being the delayed response to his shock at hearing her plain desire to fuck, but Rin didn’t pay much attention to that. The sudden, all too clear awareness that this would probably be their last time to fool around for the next two to three weeks left her no room for extra thoughts, for suppositions and whys and wherefores; Rin was _hungry_ , and she intended to sate herself as well as she could.

Obito was hungry too. The moment he judged the rice done enough to seal away, it was gone, swallowed up by what was probably the wrong edibles scroll in his haste to come over and join in. Which he began, for whatever reason, with a hand on her head, stroking gently through her hair as she swallowed hard around Kakashi’s cock. There was hesitation in Obito’s touch, a poignant note of ‘should I?’ alongside the welcome warmth of his fingers against her scalp. “I, uh, what do I…”

“Mmlph.” Rin coughed a little—too fucking impatient, pulling off that fast. “Let’s move a bit. You can lick me too.”

Suggesting that arrangement was something of a mistake. Rin ended up on her side, legs draped over Obito’s shoulders as he thrust his warm, wet tongue into her. Sometimes, she had her mouth full of Kakashi’s cock. Sometimes, she moaned against the damp skin of Kakashi’s tense, leanly muscled thigh. They couldn’t all fit on one bedroll, not easily, so two had been pushed together, and even the awkwardness of the bedding shifting beneath them and separating just enough to be annoying wasn’t enough to keep Rin from coming until her cunt started to ache within.

“I want,” she gasped, finally, and she didn’t know how it was decided that she be on her knees between them, Obito rubbing his condom-sheathed tip against her while Kakashi fucked her throat, but it was so right, so _good_ that she kept moaning. Feeling Kakashi reach down to squeeze her breasts was enough to tip her over the edge again. Obito forced his way in anyway, his ragged breaths as he did so barely louder than her muffled, eager cries.

Rin only realized her vicelike grip on Kakashi’s hips and ass was drawing blood after he’d come enough that she needed to swallow twice. It was a trial and a half suppressing the immediate urge to lick, to taste; luckily, there was a lot of distraction available, from the sweet, urgent motion of Obito within her to the sharp pleasure of licking clean Kakashi’s softened cock, and the even sharper one of having his hands on her.

Kakashi still hadn’t said anything. But then his narrowed gaze and rough manhandling meant that he didn’t really need to do so to get his punishing purpose across. That the hard squeezes and pinches and hair-pulling only made her even more breathless didn’t seem to matter to him; what mattered was that she was getting her due, getting fondled and groped without being able to refuse.

“It’s tight,” Obito kept moaning. “You’re so fucking tight.” The force of his thrusts jarred her body. A deep spasm went through her just as Obito bent in over her, groaning as he began to empty himself inside her, each strong twitch of his cock only heightening her pleasure. When he pulled out, Kakashi’s fingers were there to plug her up, to roughly stimulate her until the fine tremors wracking her body were more than just that. “Do you like it, Rin? Do you like it this rough?”

Rin’s hoarse cry as she came for what felt like the fifteenth time this morning was all the answer they needed.

That said, by the time she’d come out of that muddled thought process long enough for anything she said to be useful, Rin couldn’t help but add: “Rin-Rin doesn’t _always_ like it like that.” Then, when Kakashi aimed a sardonic look at her over his shoulder: “Really, okay?”

“We’ll see,” was his flippant answer. Followed by something between a twitch and a stiff shrug, and: “You could just have asked, you know, instead of just…”

“You don’t listen to that,” Rin muttered. “Didn’t Obito ever ask?” Then, when Kakashi scowled at her, she prodded him in the side with her finger. “Well? When he asked, what—”

“What do you think he said?” Obito mumbled, from the other side of Kakashi. “Told me to fuck off.”

“Oh, oh, so—”

“ _You_ can ask,” Kakashi said, through gritted teeth. “Okay?”

“Unfair,” Obito cried out, rocking back and forth so violently that even Rin could feel his motions despite Kakashi bracing against them. “You’re always so much nicer to her! Fuck, you’re so biased it’s disgusting.”

“Aren’t you exactly the same?” Kakashi growled, half sitting up in a bid to try and pin down Obito’s flailing body. “You—stay still.”

“No! Help, Rin, he’s—”

“You want me to be nice to you? Stay fucking still.”

There was something hopelessly endearing about watching them just then. Obito squealed loud enough to wake the dead and tried to wriggle his way out of Kakashi’s grip on his chest and his shoulder, but he didn’t work anywhere near as hard as he would have if he were really trying to get free. And Kakashi’s grim, infuriated expression only added to the hot feeling it gave Rin when he finally bent in to press a loud, smacking kiss to Obito’s cheek.

“There,” Kakashi said, through gritted teeth. “Wasn’t that nice?”

“Uh,” Obito said, licking his lips. “It… I mean, considering that we’re sleeping together,” and thank god, at least _he_ was still shy enough to flush when he said that, “shouldn’t that have been, y’know, on my mouth?”

“Shut up,” Kakashi said, bending in again. “You’ll take it wherever I want to kiss you.” Sure enough, the next kiss was on Obito’s neck and seemed to carry enough bite that Obito flinched when it landed, then moaned when Kakashi started sucking on him there.

“Hey,” Rin said, creeping closer. “Can Rin-Rin play too?”

The way Kakashi paused his assault to glare at her was up there in the list of most satisfying things that had ever happened to her in this life. After that, though he didn’t pounce on her—he’d have had to get off Obito for that, and he clearly didn’t want to let the other boy off that easily—Rin was soon properly pinned down as well, and being made to suffer.

Or at least that was the idea. Rin did her best to complain and protest Kakashi’s aggressive teasing in the cutesiest voice possible. Obito added to the spectacle by shamelessly holding her down and groping her bare breasts, muttering excitedly about how he was only doing it because he was afraid of what Kakashi would do to him if he sided with Rin.

Just like that, that morning’s planned schedule of camp chores and sparring went completely off track.

* * *

They still managed to get to the escort meeting place exactly on time the next day. Rin, by then, was tender all over, and very smug as a result. Vicious sparring the day before (when they’d finally got round to it) was only one part of what was slowing her down; the rest was what had happened when Obito, who had taken the brunt of Kakashi’s delayed realisation that both of them were pinning him more often during taijutsu for all the wrong reasons, had dug a hole and baked the sides so he could soak in it.

Rin had claimed the right to the use of Obito’s impromptu bath by virtue of being the only one that could easily fill it. Kakashi had just brazenly stripped and stepped in. They shouldn’t have had enough energy left to fool around, but something about the combination of hot water and nakedness had given them all a second wind.

“Ah, Ao-san, Gin-san, good morning,” Ito-san said, once the customary pause to collect herself on seeing most of the Demon Group pop out of the shadows on the edge of her camp had passed, “give us just another half hour, would you? We’ve someone new on this run, and they aren’t completely packed yet.”

“No problem,” Rin said, shrugging slightly. Ito-san had never shorted them when the caravan ran a little late, and though she rarely compensated them for the extra time, she was the reason they got such low rates at the ryokan in Ichinohe. Besides, chances were that the new face—either yet another small-time merchant looking to share in the security of travelling with someone established, or perhaps some relative or employee of Ito-san’s that needed seasoning—would very quickly figure out how to streamline their operations so that they didn’t have to sweat while Kakashi prowled restlessly through the camp, the way he always did on a delayed start.

(Something about the way Kakashi was moving this morning put him firmly over the line between ‘young, but someone to watch’ and ‘young, definitely dangerous’. Weirdly, without the face paint and the scarf he’d just looked really relaxed. Must have been the bath; Rin had had to drag him out to keep him from dozing off in there.)

A quarter hour later, Obito’s clone shunshined into the midst of the camp, stopping just in front of where Rin, Akino and Urushi were standing. “Why aren’t we moving yet? All clear, by the way. Oh, Ito-sama, good morning!”

“Good morning,” was Ito-san’s faint response, because even though Obito’s scars and general, uh, presence had clearly never been something she felt comfortable around, you couldn’t possibly not respond to that much sunny enthusiasm. “It’ll just be a little longer, Kuro-san.”

“Oh? Okay!” Obito’s clone didn’t quite bounce over to stand next to Rin, but she could tell it was trying hard not to. “Say, Ao-chan, can we stay somewhere re~eally nice at the end of this? Y’know, since we didn’t get to here?”

“We’re on mission,” Rin said, sternly, because Obito’s clone’s heated gaze made it perfectly clear why he’d instructed it to bring something like that up right now. “Save that talk for afterwards.”

“I was just asking,” the clone said, its tone innocent, its yearning gaze very much not so. “What’s that place in Ōgawara called again, the one with three springs…?”

Rin only had to give the clone a narrow-eyed look for it to cough and turn around and walk off whistling, its casual ambling taking it unerringly in the direction of Kakashi’s form. Once it had turned its back on her, though, Rin had a hard time stifling a smile; at this rate, it was anyone’s guess whether Ito-san would come away thinking Obito had some sort of craze for ryokans with hot springs.

Or who knows, maybe that sly ‘just asking an innocent question’ tone of Obito’s had read as exactly as flirtatious as it had meant to be, and Ito-san would now be quietly dismayed that Ao-san was encouraging the suit of the least reliable appearing member of the Demon Group.

Either way, though, Rin was happy, and not because the way things between the three of them had turned out had demolished some of her old worries. Realistically, their relationship would make for even more tangled, acrimonious arguments in the future, every professional disagreement given an extra, super-personal weight.

But even with all that potentially on the horizon, Rin couldn’t help but feel at peace. _We’ll make it work somehow,_ she thought, stretching her and San’s chakra sense all the way through the camp, half for the mission, and half to feel the two familiar smudges of her teammates again. _We can at least try._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand there you have it. Next arc will be the last one, and should be 3-5 chapters at the very most. Most of those will be from other POVs than Rin's, as I try to write a 'the end' that lets you peek ahead a bit at Rin and company as actual adults.


	23. Who's kidnapped by Rin-Rin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day everything changed for Gaara began like any other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm baaaack!!! Extremely late /o\\. But I'm almost done with the next chapter AND the very last one I'll be adding to this story. So sit back, curl up and enjoy Gaara's kidnapping as best as you can, because there's more to come ;D
> 
> Btw, the only change I'm making in this verse wrt Gaara's backstory is that some of the assassinations he suffered while growing up before and after Yashamaru's death were from external enemies looking to remove a weapon from Suna's arsenal as well as, y'know, his asshole dad trying to kill him.
> 
> Oh and for anyone who forgot the trio's Demon Group names, Ao = Rin, Gin = Kakashi, and Kuro = Obito.

The day everything changed for Gaara began like any other, almost the way it’d used to before… before.

He woke up (sat up) early. Breakfast was laid on the table by the terrified maid. He ate well.

That day, for some reason or another, his lessons were cancelled. They were awful anyway, so Gaara didn’t mind not being forced to go. Sometimes he hurt his new teachers during them, and though that was less of a problem these days, it still felt annoying when he had to deal with what came afterwards.

A counter slowly flipped over in his head. Enough hours had passed as he combed through grains of sand in his bedroom while listening to Mother’s distorted whispers that he felt only a little stupid stalking out the door and bulling his way through the various useless security checks until he was beneath the ever-present baking sun. Moments later, he was seated in the sole, sand-blasted swing of his favourite playground, not really swinging so much as trying to see if he could force the seat to move when he pushed and pulled on the sand in the air around him.

His guards didn’t like it when he did that, but that was their problem. And then there was an explosion, and one of them went still, then arrowed off in the direction it had come from, all while Gaara frowned and pushed a little harder on his sand.

He was puzzling over the mechanics of what he was trying to do so hard that he only noticed the quiet thump of his remaining guard’s body falling to the ground a moment after it had happened, and by then, it was too late to do anything.

The woman that had done it didn’t look like the kind of person who’d be good at dropping someone so fast. She was fairly short, and had a normal—too normal, almost forgettable—face with faded brown tattoos, neat black hair tied back into a no-nonsense bun, and the same kind of dusty cotton tunic and trousers most people wore.

Her hands were the giveaway, strong, calloused and clad in the kind of heavy rings that looked like they hid poison or spikes. Those hands looked extremely capable of whatever it was she had done to Gaara’s guard, no matter how sadly she was gazing down at him now.

“Let me guess,” Gaara said, pretending to let go of the sand curled around the swing chains so that it trickled back down to the ground. “You’re here to kill me.”

“Nope,” the woman said, very seriously. Her voice was strange, muted in a way that didn’t fit her. But none of the way she looked fit together, so Gaara forced himself to stop thinking about it, focusing on drenching all the nearby sand in chakra. “I’m here to kidnap you instead.”

“Kidnap?” Gaara’s chakra control wavered at that one, absurd word. _Are you crazy?_ he wanted to say. The last person that tried it ended up as a lump of bloodied meat, just like the others. You’d think the first two people ending up the same way would have given that man pause, but well.

When asked about it, Uncle Yashamaru had said ‘twice can be a coincidence’, and smirked wickedly; Gaara’s uncle had never been very upset when Gaara squeezed an enemy into paste. Yashamaru had always saved his upset and his worries for Gaara’s actual mistakes.

Thinking of him right now was a terrible idea, so Gaara stopped it, and tugged on the sand around them, bringing it into a hazy, whirling knot around him and the woman. It was surprisingly difficult even though he’d made sure to focus properly. Even more surprising was the fact that the woman seemed too stupid to do the safe thing and try and knock him out before he pulped her.

Mother sighed in the back of his head, resisting his pull. _Not this time,_ she said, her voice making something inside Gaara twist and strain from the force of it, and suddenly, Gaara was wheezing on his knees, breathless, his very teeth aching from the backlash of chakra being torn from his control.

A breath shuddered through him. _No,_ Gaara snarled, to himself, remembering, despite himself, the most recent time something like this had happened. After his uncle… Mother had stolen his chakra just like this. _Don’t—_

Everything in him seemed to slow down as he saw, or felt, or smelled the woman walking closer.

Another choking breath. The woman sighed, crouching down before him, so close that Gaara could see she was even wearing the style of sandals a Suna-bred merchant would.

_She’s going to knock us out!_ he thought, no, screamed at Mother. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He couldn’t believe this was happening _again_ , that someone he trusted—the only other person he trusted— _Help me!_

_Trust me,_ Mother snapped, pinching at the chakra Gaara was desperately trying to gather up, scattering it into nothing with just a bit of pressure. _Stop doing that._

Someone else appeared just outside the knot of sand that Gaara kept gaining and losing fine control of. They yelped (good!), but pressed forward (bad, really bad) enough to lay a hand on Gaara’s shoulder, slipping in under the sand. Then the world fell sideways in a way that didn’t make sense, and the hot, hard-packed dirt beneath Gaara’s knees suddenly turned into cool, dark, featureless stuff, neither sand nor stone or brick.

Gaara retched, reeling from the transition, raging inside at Mother, at these devious new kidnappers, at his useless guards. Then, of course, at Father, and beyond him, at everything and everyone in the world. _It’s all right,_ Gaara told himself. _They’re people. They’ll die just fine one at a time._

‘One thing at a time’ had been his uncle’s favourite encouragement. Thinking it to himself in a bad situation hurt in a way Gaara didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand. It felt like a betrayal, but also not. Like the quiet space Gaara had hidden amidst the storm of chakra and resentment that raged within him.

“What do you want?” Gaara snapped, on seeing another man, one with spiky dark hair and an exaggeratedly tired expression. “They won’t trade you anything for me, you know. Back there, they all…” Why was it still hard to say the truth? “Even if I die, they’ll just, they’ll wait for Mother to come back.”

(He’d never told Yashamaru that he’d overheard a pair of jonin discussing that. At the time, he’d been so sure his uncle would never allow such a thing to happen, and so confident that with a bit more effort, a bit more care, a bit more control, he’d get to a point where he no longer made mistakes.)

“No one’s going to kill you, kid,” someone said, from right behind him, and Gaara couldn’t help but stiffen a little before forcing himself to relax. The man—had to be, his voice was deep and rough and impatient in a way women’s voices usually weren’t—still had a hand on Gaara’s shoulder but something in Gaara’s brain had _forgotten_ , had edited it out somehow. For the first time in a long, long while, Gaara found himself having to repress a fearful, instinctive swallow. “Relax, okay? We’re risking a whole fucking lot to help you out, you know?”

“Kuro.”

“Sorry, fu—uh, sorry. I’ll watch the language.”

The woman didn’t seem convinced by that hasty apology, but didn’t dwell on it, her calm brown gaze returning to Gaara again. “We’ll fix things for you, Gaara-kun,” she said, causing another (useless, _useless_ ) shiver to try and go through him. “It’ll be difficult, and it’ll hurt, I won’t lie, but once it’s over, you’ll have a place with us.”

Her voice wasn’t soft, but her words were. Careful and even and soft and everything Gaara had always used to want to hear.

Gaara almost felt sorry for her.

As always, that didn’t mean he didn’t lash out. “You think what I want is a place with you?” he said, widening his eyes. He’d wrestled away a bit, just a tiny bit of chakra from Mother by now, and there was just enough sand in his pockets, in his gourd and even in the folds of all his captors’ clothes to give them a nasty lesson. “Nee-san, your intelligence is really, really, _really_ bad.”

Unleashing the sand he’d gathered sent a torrent of dark satisfaction through Gaara for one long, blissful moment. In the next, the sand… stopped.

The man behind him, the man that had just hastily taken a heavy hand off Gaara’s shoulder, let out a hiss of pain. Which would have been good if Gaara wasn’t sweating from the effort, no the chakra he was pouring into the whirlwind that _wasn’t moving_.

The spiky-haired man sighed. “‘No trouble,’ she said. Why do I even fucking believe it anymore?”

“ _Gin_.”

“Come on, he’s a jinchuuriki, you can’t tell me he’s never heard anyone swear.”

“He’s a child,” the woman said, her tone hard, yet seething with barely concealed emotion, as if that one, bare judgement was all that mattered. Gaara froze for a moment, utterly losing the hard-won sliver of control he had on Mother’s chakra, and it took a ragged breath for him to be ready to try and seize it back. “Act like it, okay?”

“He seems against the idea of staying with us,” Gin said, with a considering look down at Gaara’s stony face. “Maybe we should rethink—”

“There’s nothing to think about,” the woman snapped. “I’m not just doing this for San, you know.”

“We know that, Ao-chan,” the other man—Kuro, wasn’t it? Why were they all named after colours?—said, his rough voice trying and failing to take on a soothing tone. “We know, okay? We’ll just take it step by step.”

Gaara, unable to keep from shivering when Kuro’s hand landed on his shoulder again and started propelling him forward, could not help but feel that this was just the beginning of his end.

* * *

It wasn’t. Just as Gaara thought he was definitely, definitely, definitely going to die of the agony tearing through his stomach, he felt something cool and damp land on his forehead.

“Does that help?” Ao-san said, her voice slightly unsteady. “Hold on a little longer, okay, Gaara-kun? It’s almost done.”

* * *

It took something like four more hours and a whole lot more pain for Gaara to realize he couldn’t hear Mother anymore.

When he demanded to know what had happened (preparing to force himself to make a useless demand that they put her back), Ao-san’s sympathetic gaze narrowed. “He made you call him _Mother_?”

“He?” Gaara said, unable to keep his voice from trembling. “Uh. No.”

_You can call me your mother if you like,_ Mother had said, once. _That won’t make it true._

(She’d still never stopped him from doing so. And Gaara knew all too well how easily she could, by simply forcing chakra into his throat.)

“Really?” Ao-san said. “You’re sure he didn’t—”

“It’s just a nickname,” Gaara lied. “Sh—he nags me a lot.” Wondering why he didn’t simply kill that one maid that never ever got within an arm’s length of him if she could help it could probably count as nagging. Mother had done a lot of that kind of wondering, about all different sorts of people. “Where is… where did you put… him?”

It occurred to Gaara, even as he asked, how stupid of a question it was. He’d known, in a vague way, that since Mother had been put into him, there would be some way of taking her out. That Ao-san and her team had gone to the trouble of not killing him while they took away Mother was shocking enough that he still wasn’t quite sure it had happened at all. That he’d _ask_ , like an idiot, what they had done with Mother’s power, the blindingly obvious reason they’d picked him up…

“He’s in a jar,” Ao-san said, grudgingly, shocking him again. “He’s adjusting far better than you are, you know. You don’t need to worry about him.”

Gaara didn’t say anything to that. His eyes ached. His chest kept heaving on its own. He didn’t know what he was feeling. Anger? Shame? Relief?

_Worry about yourself,_ Ao-san’s stern, yet sympathetic gaze seemed to be saying. As if it would even help anything. Without Mother, none of Gaara’s worry would ever amount to anything. Even with her on his side, he’d barely been able to continue living in a village that hated him.

Now that he had nothing, what was he going to do?

“I meant what I said,” Ao-san murmured. She put her hand on his shoulder, ignoring the weak, ineffective swirl of his automatic sand defence. “You have a place with us, okay? Just like him.”

_Liar,_ Gaara thought, over and over again. He worried that if he stopped, he would start to believe her.

* * *

The next few days went by slowly. Ao-san, killer’s hands and all, turned out to be a really good med-nin as well. Despite the fact that she was definitely the kind of person Gaara hated (“Morning, Gaara-kun! How are you feeling? Not up to talking? That’s okay, you can just nod! Are you ready for breakfast?”), being around her was strangely relaxing.

She never seemed offended by his low hums and grunts. She never trembled when he looked at her, though, when he thought about it, thought about the new, strange emptiness in his chakra pathways, it wasn’t like she _should_ be afraid of him. His chakra control was still alright, but lifting a bucketload of sand strained him in a way it never had before. And there was the fact that when Ao-san brought in that very same bucket, she’d hefted it like it was empty.

Gaara, who’d never had to worry about how strong someone else was, could not help but pay attention to things like that now. He had no confidence in these people, in Ao-san’s earnest promise that he could stay with them. Had it been clear that Ao-san’s team was from somewhere like Konoha, somewhere soft enough to let their ninja worry about things like that yet treacherous enough to deliberately sabotage their ally’s weapon, Gaara might have let himself begin to hope.

But Ao-san’s cheery voice was slowed by a distinctly Rivers drawl, and the few times either Gin or Kuro spoke, they both had the same, slightly uneven accent. Gaara didn’t know a lot of things, but he’d spied on people in the market enough that he could sort of tell where someone was likely to be from. Rivers wasn’t a rich enough hidden village that their shinobi could afford to do favours for random kids.

Which meant that, unless Gaara wanted to end up dead or abandoned on some tiny farm somewhere in the Land of Rivers, he needed to get away from these people fairly soon.

Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. Every two or three days, Kuro covered Gaara’s eyes and the world went strangely sideways, and they all walked through the dark, featureless, blocky nowhere that had been used to kidnap him in the beginning. Then, just as Gaara was thoroughly lost, Kuro would cover his eyes again and hold him steady while the world spun back onto the right track, and they’d be a mile or so away from a village.

When it rained—which it did a lot, after they crossed the border into River—they stayed in a cheap inn. When it was dry, they camped not far from the main road. They were never taken notice of, first because Ao-san had dyed Gaara’s hair a dull brown and dressed him in shabby clothes and a ragged headband right from the beginning, and second because she always produced a large, rickety handcart loaded with barrels out of nowhere after they were back in the real world again.

Gaara was almost always forced to sit in the cart. Every time they passed someone on the road, he couldn’t help but tense inside, expecting something, _waiting_ for someone to see he didn’t belong, but no one gave them a second glance. It was in the second town, the one just after the Wind-Rivers border, that Gaara understood why: there were a lot of traders that used just this kind of cart. Some of them flocked to the big merchant caravans to travel in numbers. Most of them wore the same kind of plain, hard-worn tunics and pants that Ao-san and the others wore. A few of them even brought along children.

That was the moment Gaara knew that his kidnappers were probably going to get away with it. Blending in with merchants was one thing; blending in this effortlessly, and even using him, the one person they _should_ be hiding, as part of their disguise, was another.

At the fourth town (or maybe the fifth? Gaara wasn’t sure if they’d kept him asleep for one or more of them), they even stopped their rickety wagon to offload some goods and haggle over payment. “You don’t understand how lucky we got,” Kuro said, his tone bitter, his expression aggrieved. “If we’d pushed on any deeper into Wind, only the gods know if we’d ever have come out. Those ninja on the border…” He shuddered. “One man tried to refuse, and they smashed open every container in his caravan. Every container. The whole checkpoint stank of wine and piss while we were there. They even tore up his merchant pass…”

So Gaara had definitely been asleep for _that_ , if any of it was even true.

Kuro grumbled and swore under his breath for something like a half hour after he finished up bargaining with that sympathetic but firm contact. “It’s the principle of the thing,” he said righteously, when he caught Gaara staring at him. “A little extra money is always worth the effort. You’ll learn.”

“There’s no need to justify your dramatics to him,” Gin said, with a cool sideways glance. “Leave the boy in peace.”

“Oh, but you can’t deny that when he’s settled, knowing a bit more about how to manage money will—”

“Kuro.”

As always, one curt word from Ao-san, who seemed to get more on edge whenever they were anywhere near a town, was enough to make deflate what Gaara had started to think of as Kuro’s unlimited capacity for bluster. Tense as she was, though, she always seemed to have an brief touch on Gaara’s head, or a light squeeze of his shoulder.

Gaara liked to think he would have protested her seemingly constant drive to comfort or reassure him if he’d had enough chakra that facing off against her and her crazy partners didn’t fill him with dread. But then if he’d been strong enough (if Mother had not betrayed him), he wouldn’t even be here.

* * *

Three weeks into the kidnapping, Gaara, hunched over a bowl of strangely delicious fried rice, was starting to think he’d maybe got the wrong idea.

For one thing, the day Gaara had gotten so wound up and reckless that he’d spilled the beans about precisely who his family was, why they’d never want him back and why he therefore couldn’t believe Ao-san’s promise about taking him on, he’d realized that her earlier fits of annoyance and tension and snappishness were nothing to her true, pure rage.

It’d felt like being within arm’s reach of a seething mountain. Ao-san’s familiar, somewhat bubbly chakra had condensed into something that smelt like hot, blood-laden mist. Gaara hadn’t even been able to move, deeply certain that one false twitch would make her turn and _look_ at him.

“Ao-chan,” Kuro had said, his voice seeming to come from far away. “Cool it a little, okay? You’re scaring him.”

“That…” Each word she’d spoken had been distorted. Doubled, somehow. “That _worm_. His own son. And in the end, when his weapon failed him…?”

It had been a relief for Gaara to feel Gin’s brief, impersonal touch on his shoulder, steering him a couple steps back. Relief and terror both, because Gin had then gone on to place himself between Gaara and Ao-san and Kuro. Gin was the most normal of the three, the only one Gaara had yet to see in action, and the thought of Gin trying to protect him or picking the worst possible time to try and make off with him had been seriously worrying.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Ao-san had snarled. “I could have—”

And then she’d fallen entirely silent, still quivering with rage within the careful grasp of Kuro’s arms. Each breath of hers filled the room of their rented house with a choking, chakra-laden mist.

“Take him outside, for now,” Kuro had said, and Gaara had spent the most awkward yet terrifying hour of his life being led around a sleepy little Rivers town and curtly shown the sights. Which seemed largely to consist of directions on how to get in or out of various buildings without being noticed, plus the occasional mumbled comment about how the somen here was good, or the stall they’d just passed made okay okonomiyaki, but what you really wanted was the one that popped up in the market every weekend.

Just as Gaara began to worry that Gin was ready to make some traitorous move, Kuro showed up and badgered them back into the house, where a rather more blotchy than usual Ao-san kissed and hugged all three of them and apologized in a low, shaky tone.

After that, though Ao-san stopped repeating her promise every so often, her careful touches became hard, swift hugs and ruffles of Gaara’s hair. There was always something Gaara had been unable to conceal liking available for dinner. Kuro taught him to fish, and tried to get him to buckle down to learn how to do it with just chakra strings, ignoring Gin’s rolled eyes and disdainful murmurs.

_It’s crazy how well this is going,_ Gaara would think, every time he woke up. _Really_ woke up, which of course made everything stranger. _I wonder how long it’ll last._

Living with his kidnappers was still kind of nice, even with the obvious worry hanging over his head. Gaara no longer had annoying lessons, or even more annoying, silent guards, and though he still wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone other than Ao, Kuro and Gin, the three of them were always willing to listen, to answer stupid questions and tell ridiculous stories.

* * *

Two weeks after that, the nice little holiday came to an end.

(Gaara knew it wasn’t really a holiday, but somehow he’d come to think of it as one, to imagine that it was. He’d only had holidays with his uncle, and weird as his three kidnappers were, the easy atmosphere they maintained with him was oddly similar.)

They had just moved town twice in a row, going over the Rivers-Fire border and then heading north through Grass country, the cart increasing in sturdiness and acquiring cargo from nowhere as they went. They were skirting the Grass-Iron border when they ran into five people on the scrubby, stony trail, all five with kunai and shuriken gleaming in the noontime sun.

Ao-san’s first reaction was a quiet, nearly soundless sigh.

Gaara, shivering a little, poured his chakra into the heavy jar wedged beside him in the cart, the one that they always let him keep nicely full of dry sand. He didn’t know what it said about him that, when Kuro stepped close and put a heavy hand on his shoulder, it felt comforting as well as just that little bit terrifying.

“This,” Ao-san said, in a low, pleasant tone that had an unsettling echo to it, “is looking very much like breach of contract, Hano-san.”

“It’s only fair,” one of the five people blocking the road said. “You broke terms first, didn’t you, Ao.”

Kuro’s hand tensed on Gaara’s shoulder. Gin took a single, menacing step forward. Gaara flinched at the sudden surge of killing intent blooming all around him.

Ao-san laughed. Suddenly, Gaara realized what it was about her voice that had felt subtly off while she was kidnapping him; it had been too low, too serious. This shrill giggle was much more right somehow, more fitting. “You think this ends your way just because you know my name?”

“You and your little group need fear no reprisal,” the man that had been speaking said, tonelessly. “So long as you surrender the jinchuuriki, all debts can be considered paid.”

“Ah? I could have sworn that your precious contract only asked that we remove Sunagakure’s jinchuuriki, and nothing else. Now, you’re saying you want custody of him?”

“We both know the contract was for his death, Ao-san.”

“The contract said ‘removal’. He was removed.”

The man that had been speaking for the five ahead of them gave Ao-san’s smiling, deliberately oblivious expression a long, considering look, and then let his cold gaze sweep up and down her plainly clad body. “This will be such a waste.” And then added, just as Gin took another menacing step forward: “Can all of you at least do me the favour of resuming your proper appearance?”

The only answer the man received was Ao-san’s fist punching through his chest with a loud, heavy crack. The masked man beside him surged forward to come to his aid, only to crumple to the ground a moment later.

“I only need this one,” Ao-san murmured, even as another of them fell, their top halves sliding forward faster than the rest of them.

It was only on the fourth kill that Gaara could finally tell that Gin was responsible, and only then because the last two were trying to run away, and it was easier to spot the moment Gin disappeared and reappeared beside the unlucky woman that had fled back down the trail.

The fifth one folded soundlessly with another cracking punch from Ao-san, who shook the body off her hand and returned her attention to the shuddering body of the speaker. “Kuro, you’re not letting Gaara-kun watch, are you?”

And just like that, Gaara was forced to turn around in the cart by Kuro’s heavy hand, as if not being able to see the source of the broken, gurgling screams behind him was enough to fix everything.

* * *

Weirdly, even though the next few hectic weeks that followed were far more unsettled and unstable than before, Gaara felt content.

He had an explanation for why the Demon Group had come after him: they’d accepted a somewhat vaguely written contract by proxy from Sasori of the Red Sands to relieve Suna of its infamous weapon, and had fulfilled it to the letter. He even understood why Ao-san had planned from the beginning to keep him and Mother both; she and the rest of the group were all demons just like the two of them, so she’d thought to kill two birds with one stone by taking them in.

There were various other mysteries, none of which Gaara had much in the way of answers to, but they didn’t worry him. Pakkun had promised to fill him in as he got older, and besides it wasn’t all that hard to figure some things out just by paying attention.

That was how Gaara found out that Ao-san was married to both Kuro and Gin, rather than just one of them. That was also how he found out that Ao-san had been a jinchuuriki like him, too.

‘Had been’ was probably the wrong way to put it. But Gaara couldn’t quite bring himself to see her as the same kind of monster he’d been when her bijuu seemed to merge in and out of her all the time with no fanfare at all. San—the trend for strangely simple names continued to him too—seemed so much like a normal person that it took some time for Gaara to really believe he was a bijuu at all.

(When tentatively asked whether Mother would be able to come out of the jar like that in future, San’s usual, mild expression firmed. “Yes,” he said. “But only when it’s safe.”)

“Why is San so… nice?” Gaara asked, one quieter than usual morning, when it was just him and Gin in the featureless place. The others had just popped out to make what Ao-san had called a ‘social call’ with such meanly sparkling eyes that it was all too obvious that someone was going to end up bleeding from it, and while Gaara now felt a little afraid of Gin, he was still the first one Gaara went to when seeking for answers. “Has he not ever had to kill anyone?”

That was probably the wrong thing to have said, from the way Gin’s bland expression twitched. “I wouldn’t say that had anything to do with it,” he said. “He’s always been that polite, as long as we’ve known him. It’s just how he is.”

“Then, why is Mother—I mean, why is Ichi not…?” Gaara, having already made the mistake of forgetting Mother’s newly assigned Demon Group name, found himself faltering. He’d been careful to make it sound like a casual question, rather than the stupid, whiny, useless complaint it almost was.

He’d wanted to ask, from the moment he’d seen San sling an arm around Ao-san’s shoulders the very first day he’d appeared beside her in Gaara’s view. He’d wondered, unable to help himself, and come to the conclusion that Mother—that Ichi had perhaps not known how to make a clone that way, before. That the whispers were the only way she’d—he’d been able to use to reach out.

It still didn’t seem fair. There wasn’t anyone to blame for it, either, other than Ichi, and even Gaara could tell that was a dead end. Father had told him Ichi was insane, and much as Gaara had quietly sympathized with Ichi—who wouldn’t, when ‘ _let me out let me go let me OUT_ ’ was always part of the constant refrain?

(They’d never really let Gaara out, either.)

So Gaara had felt guilty agreeing with Father about Ichi’s insanity. But he’d still agreed, even when he’d sometimes thought some people weren’t worth protecting from Ichi’s ever-present fury.

Now, though, with San’s constant calm as an example, Gaara wondered. If San had been the monster in him…

“If I were you,” Gin said, his low, steady tone cutting in cross Gaara’s muddled thoughts, “I’d just think of it as my being bitterly unlucky.”

Gaara’s mouth opened and closed and opened again, his shoulders hunching on their own. “Unlucky?” he heard himself say. “ _Unlucky?_ ”

(Being angry these days was weirdly satisfying. His sand always seemed to listen to him, now, without Ichi’s constant, sneaking attempts at stealing it away. He had yet to do more than make it drum and scrape in a scary way inside his jar, half because he worried his control wasn’t yet enough, and half because he knew how much the demon dogs hated getting it all through their fur.)

(One of Gaara’s biggest regrets about the end of the sort-of-holiday was how the dogs never came out now.)

Gin crouched down in front of him and laid a light hand on the top of his head. “Yes,” he said, firmly. “Unlucky.” And then added, as Gaara’s mouth moved on nothing, as he desperately tried not to cry: “It wasn’t your fault.”

“But,” Gaara found himself choking out, even though it was the very last thing he wanted, “but they said—uncle said—” He didn’t even want to remember it, and he could never forget, and yet the words were forcing themselves out. “He said m-my, my real mother hated me, hated the village, and wanted…”

“So?” Gin’s voice was almost sharp, now. Comfortingly so, just the way he sounded when he thought Gaara was missing the point while learning a tricky jutsu. Gin was probably the worst teacher of the group, but he never seemed to tire of trying. “Like I said. Bitterly unlucky.”

Gin didn’t hand out hugs the way Ao-san, and, to a lesser extent, Kuro-san did. He always seemed to have to think about it for a moment. His arm was a warm, tentative weight around Gaara’s shoulders. It shouldn’t have made Gaara sob harder, but it did.

“It may take some time to believe it wasn’t your fault,” Gin murmured, some time later. “You’ll get there eventually. I did.”

* * *

As it turned out, it was only deemed ‘safe’ for Ichi to come out of his jar on a ragged, mostly bare rock of an island far offshore from Wave Country, and for a very good reason. Despite Ao-san’s order that he come out slowly, Ichi poured out in a wave of bloody-smelling chakra and sand, cackling at the top of his lungs, shrieking his joy loud enough for everyone within a couple miles to hear.

Ao-san, already in a somewhat dicey mood that afternoon for whatever reason, wasted no time in growing to match him. “What did I just fucking say?” she roared. “You shitty, _irresponsible_ little—”

“Gin, get him out of here,” Kuro said, and before Gaara could so much as open his mouth to protest, him and Gin were standing on the crest of a choppy wave a mile away.

“—traumatizing him for years!” Just as Gaara had expected, he could still hear Ao-san’s shrill, unearthly scolding. “I don’t care how you fucking felt! You should have known better!!” Every other word was punctuated with a punch, a slap, or a kick, some of them sending shudders across the water, others only noticeable as muffled booms in the distance. “What? You’ve got something to fucking say for yourself? Huh? _Huh?_ ”

Funnily enough, that was when the both of them finally began to shrink down. Another piercing crash echoed over, followed by something that sounded like “side a rock and _eat_ you”, and then more muffled, incoherent yelling.

One dull, increasingly sleepy hour later, Gin straightened up from his comfortable slouch next to Gaara’s dozing form on the seat of the rowing boat they were sitting in. “Looks like she’s all done,” he said, reaching a hand out to Gaara. “Come on.”

(Gaara was never, ever, ever going to get used to how comfortable the others seemed to be with large, heavy things appearing and disappearing into seals. He was always expecting some part of it to fail.)

The island was noticeably smaller than before, and seemed strangely flat, like someone had taken a giant shovel and mashed it down in one smooth motion. Kuro was down in a cross-legged seat beside Ichi’s eerily pristine black jar, looking tired and scuffed but otherwise okay. Ao, barefoot and clad in only a dark, overlong tunic that Gaara was almost certain was Kuro’s, looked embarrassed. San looked the same as ever, standing idly to Ao’s left, on the other side of a shorter man with wild brown hair that Gaara somehow instinctively recognized as Ichi.

It was the way the man was watching Gaara, the restless shifting of his feet as Gaara and Gin walked closer. The strange sheen to his bright green gaze. “Gaara-kun,” Ichi crooned, “I’ve really wronged you all these years, haven’t I? I’m _so_ sorry. You’ll forgive me, though, right? Right?”

“No.”

“Of course you will! See, you harpy, he…” Ichi’s voice trailed off, losing just a bit of its syrupy, prideful tone. “What did you just say to me?”

It took everything Gaara had not to let himself flinch back from that mad, strangely familiar stare. Familiar not because of anything about Ichi’s looks, but his tone, the way his killing intent thickened around them. Too familiar. “I don’t want to talk to him,” he found himself saying, firmly. “I don’t… I don’t want him to talk to me.”

Somehow, he wasn’t expecting Ao-san’s newly stony expression to transform into a sweet, wide smile. “Consider it done,” she said, cheerily, and turned to walk towards Ichi’s jar with the swagger of someone delighted with themselves.

Ichi went ominously still. San took a casual step forward, placing himself between Ichi and Ao as she sunk to her knees before the jar, whisking a roll of brushes and an inkwell out of nowhere. “Brother,” Ichi said, in a low, whiny tone that was somehow more chilling than anything Gaara had heard from him so far, “you’ll really let her do this? To _me_?”

“You agreed,” San said, as calmly as if they were discussing the weather. “Rescue didn’t come without conditions. You know that.”

“But she’ll…! She’s just like—” Ichi kept talking, his snarling expression signalling nothing good about the now inaudible words he was saying. He only seemed to realize what had happened midway, and stopped short, snapping his mouth shut and glaring at San as if he wanted to kill him.

“This isn’t permanent, of course,” Ao-san said, soothingly. “And of course it’s only in effect when Gaara can hear you. I think that’s fair, don’t you?”

She didn’t bat an eye at the unmistakably rude gesture Ichi made at her in response. Gaara, watching her surge back to her feet, brushes already having disappeared, couldn’t quite believe how he had been lucky enough to be picked up by people like this.

Maybe Gin was right. Maybe he had just been really, really, really unlucky, up till now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next, Minato's thoughts about his worst student. It'll likely be a few days before that's ready to post, but it shouldn't be long...


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